Bill C-33 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999

This enactment amends the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 to provide for the efficient regulation of fuels.
It also provides for a periodic and comprehensive review of the environmental and economic aspects of biofuel production in Canada by a committee of Parliament.

Motions in amendment

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

I know the member for Malpeque is anxious to answer the question, but he could at least allow the Chair to recognize him first.

The hon. member for Malpeque.

[Wayne Easter, Liberal, Malpeque, PE]

Mr. Speaker, the reality is we grow the best potatoes in the country in Prince Edward Island, that is for sure.

I have always advocated a national grains board. The Wheat Board is even more important with the ethanol production now because it maximizes returns back to primary producers. It is so sad the government is only interested in the profits of the multinationals rather than defending the rights of producers.

In terms of straw, we would like to see it used as biomass production for ethanol, not just allow it to go to waste. Yes, it is needed sometimes for organic matter, but it could also be used for the production of ethanol itself.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have to say at the outset that I did enjoy the speech by the member for Malpeque. He made some valid points and certainly laid out in a fairly clear fashion the complications that exist in this bill and this initiative going forward.

It is not a simple piece of public business. It is very complicated. We really do need to pay close attention to it and make sure we put in place all the necessary checks and balances so that we monitor and assess as we go forward and minimize the negative impact of this seemingly very positive initiative by government and industry.

I want to say right off the bat that I am certainly standing in support of, and am going to actually speak to, the amendment put forward by my colleague from Western Arctic. Earlier I was pleased to hear the Bloc also joining us in putting in place this further check and balance on this rather large and, I would guess as it rolls out, very impactful piece of business that will take us in a new direction and open up some avenues and opportunities, but which on the other hand will create some real difficulties for some folks.

I do not think we really know what all those difficulties will be yet. I do not think we have been able to quantify the impact. As was said by the member for Malpeque and the member for Western Arctic, who spoke earlier, we have not been able to quantify the impact on our food policy: security of food for all people, the cost of food, and the sustainability of our farm and agricultural industries.

I also do not think we understand the impact it is going to have on both energy and the environment. When the whole concept and idea of biofuel was first put out there, everybody was gangbusters to come on board to support it, but in some jurisdictions, particularly across the border, we are seeing that it in fact is not the elixir that everybody thought it was perhaps going to be.

I think it is really important to have this in the bill. My colleagues participated in the evaluation and the process of amendment in looking at this bill when it came before the committee after second reading. They made a number of amendments that were not accepted, so I think it was only the rightful duty of the member for Western Arctic to take this opportunity yet again.

This amendment was found to be in order and it is an amendment that will give us an earlier opportunity to see what is going on. If it is not in the best interest of the public out there, which is what we are about here, protecting the interest of the public and putting forward good public policy that benefits the most people, we need to have the opportunity to actually take a look at it.

I have served in public office for 18 years now, first at the provincial level and now at the federal level, and there are many people in this House who have been around for a long time. We understand that oftentimes the devil is the in the details. When moving large pieces of legislation that have widespread impact out there, we really need to pay attention to the regulations. It is in the regulations where we find the real meat in these kinds of bills and initiatives.

We have to be concerned when, holus-bolus, the development of regulations is turned over to the government, a government, I have to say, that is lobbied and that speaks regularly with the large corporations and multinationals out there. It runs up some red flags for a lot of people. Somebody has to be there to speak out loudly and clearly on behalf of the smaller entities that can get caught in the crunch or be bulldozed or rolled over in these instances.

What we are asking for is really not a big deal. As the government rolls out its regulations, which will be the highway down which the new initiative will go, we are asking that this be brought back to the committee to be reviewed so we can see that it turns out to be all that it was hoped to be in the first place. I think this is a good move. It is a smart move. It is in the public interest to do it. I commend the member for Western Arctic for doing the work necessary to bring it forward and have it accepted.

In the last number of years, particularly when I was in the provincial realm, we looked at biofuels, but we were looking at products that were not in the food stream and could be grown on farmers' fields, or at waste that could be gathered in forests and in the varied territory that exists across the country. That could be gathered and used. Perhaps it could be turned into oil, chips or different types of fuel sources and used to provide energy that would heat our homes. Wood pellets are used in some parts of Canada to heat homes and buildings in a very progressive and environmentally friendly way.

In my area, a very important and good debate was initiated by a local maker of particleboard when he said we should just hang on for a second. He said we would be taking his raw material, for which he pays good money and which he uses to make products. That creates jobs in the area and contributes to the local economy. He said we would be taking it to start making energy out of it. He asked what he would do then and said we were robbing Peter to pay Paul, so to speak.

This is the kind of impact that a good idea can have sometimes when we do not look at all of the ramifications. If we simply allow this kind of public policy to roll out without an opportunity to look at it as it develops through regulation, we may end up at the end of the day missing somebody, not hearing from somebody, or witnessing an outcome that we did not expect to happen in the first place.

Everything in this new venture that we are into now, where energy, fuel, new fuels, biofuels and the environment are concerned, is very interconnected and complicated. It requires the close attention of all of us in this place, who have been elected to give leadership and to be responsible for what will happen in those realms, particularly where energy and food are concerned.

Yes, I am concerned that this will drive up the price of food. We hear from across the way, particularly from the Liberals, that they want to move away from a cheap food policy. I do not know exactly where the line is there and who we are talking about when we talk about cheap food. Anybody who knows of the work I do around here knows that I have a great passion on the poverty front in regard to trying to make sure that all people who live in Canada and in fact around the world are able to feed themselves and their families.

What we may see as cheap food and cheap food policy may be quite different from what the people in a neighbourhood in downtown Toronto, let us say, might consider cheap food or expensive food. I am not arguing for one or the other. I am just saying that we really need to be careful about how we do this, because it is already having and will continue to have a huge impact on the whole food supply system.

We have heard from across the way that the Americans are moving lock, stock, and barrel with great energy, investment and enthusiasm in this direction. The facts actually tell a different story, certainly in some sectors of the U.S. I have a press release that came out on February 28,2008, not all that long ago. It states, “The ethanol boom is running out of gas as corn prices spike”.

The article states:

Cargill announces it's scrapping plans for a $200 million ethanol plant near Topeka, Kan. A judge approves the bankruptcy sale of an unfinished ethanol plant in Canton, Ill. And that was just Tuesday. Indeed, plans for as many as 50 new ethanol plants have been shelved in recent months, as Wall Street pulls back from this sector, says Paul Ho, a Credit Suisse investment banker specializing in alternative energy. Financing for new ethanol plants, Ho says,“ has been shut down”.

So is the government going to get into the financing of some of these things in a big way? Are we going to find out, if we do not have access to some of what is going on, that in two years, when we actually get to this review, the government has spent a ton of money and is now in a place where some of these plants are not economically viable any more because of the impact they are having in other ways?

I also want to share with members the fact that there is another article, this one in the Edmonton Journal, entitled “Green gold or fool's gold”. I think we have to be really careful about this. We are not saying that we should not move forward. Biofuel makes a lot of sense in many ways, but it is fraught with landmines.

That is why I stand shoulder to shoulder with the Bloc to support the amendment by my colleague from Western Arctic. I am supporting him and inviting the Liberals in particular to join us in making sure that we put yet another other check and balance in place so that we do not end up in the same place as some of these American firms.

[Rick Norlock, Conservative, Northumberland—Quinte West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I listened to my friend speaking about how some of the laws passed by this Parliament should be reviewed, or at least that is what this amendment says. If we kept doing that, we would never get anything done, because we would just be revisiting things we have passed already. That is why ministers are given powers to pass regulations pursuant to certain acts. This just lays down the parameters under which the regulations can be made.

The member made reference to the United States and some of the problems with regard to ethanol. That is why the states are going to cellulosic, or cellulose based, ethanol and that is exactly some of what this government is investing in. It is cellulosic ethanol. That is what is happening in northern Ontario.

He mentioned particleboard using chips and said that somehow we may be diverting wood products from the forest industry because that is what particleboard is made from. That is what oriented strand board is made from. However, we know that our forestry industry is in trouble, and one of the things celluosic ethanol will do is add another value added product to our forestry industry. Instead of being a negative for people who work in the forestry industry, it is going to be a positive.

I heard mention of Brazil. I was reading an article recently with regard to Brazil's economic situation. One thing bringing it out of some economic hardship is that it is not relying on very expensive hydrocarbons, very expensive petroleum products. That is the very reason it is coming out of that economic hardship. A few years ago Brazil was having difficulty making enough vehicles to run on ethanol, but it made an economic decision to move away from petroleum to ethanol, which is bringing up that country's standard of living. It is not a negative but a positive.

Europe is moving to biodiesel. It is not concentrating on ethanol necessarily and there is a good reason for that. It does not have the kind of agricultural base that we in North America have in order to support it, but what it does is buy a heck of a lot of canola oil from Canada. Canola is driving some of the economy in the west.

I just cannot understand this. There is everything positive about the bill. I suspect there is something sinister about the amendment that the NDP members want to bring in. They probably know they are never going to form government so this is--

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

Order. The member has used up half the time for questions and comments so maybe we could give the hon. member for Sault Ste. Marie some time to respond.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

First of all, Mr. Speaker, I am told that cellulosic ethanol has not been proven to be economically viable yet. It will be like the road that the folks who got into ethanol in the first place have found, in that it is fraught with difficulties that they are now trying to chase. This speaks to the issue in front of us here today, which is that we have to be really careful and cautious.

The member spoke of Brazil. I am told as well that Brazil is into ethanol fuel, but at the expense of the rainforests. Is that what we want?

[Dennis Bevington, NDP, Western Arctic, NT]

Mr. Speaker, I want to comment on my colleague's speech because he touched on the issue that there are many uses for biomass product. In fact, a paper that was presented to the agricultural committee showed that if one wanted to get a better greenhouse gas reduction at a lower cost, it would be much simpler to make up straw pellets or wood pellets and put them into existing thermal situations than it is to create either cellulosic ethanol or just corn ethanol. The return is much greater.

There are a lot of unanswered questions even about the nature of biomass energy within this country. I would recommend that hon. members take a look at the study that was done by a Canadian company. Samson was the primary researcher on it from Quebec. It lays out very clearly what the issues are around the use of wood products or any other organic product in reducing CO₂ emissions.

When you talk about the nature of the interaction between wood pellet development in northern Ontario and the use of pulp in the industry, could you elaborate on that issue a bit more?

[The Deputy Speaker, Bill Blaikie]

Order, please. I asked the member for Western Arctic earlier not to put questions directly to members but to do it in the third person and he is doing it again.

The hon. member for Sault Ste. Marie, very briefly.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Mr. Speaker, he is absolutely correct. That is why, in our areas, we are trying to pull the various interests together to not only look at both the benefits and the opportunities but also the impacts. Some of them are very negative.

We are taking ourselves--

[The Acting Speaker, Royal Galipeau]

Resuming debate, the hon. member for Eglinton—Lawrence.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am delighted to engage in this debate because we are beginning to give some scrutiny to an emerging industry. I say “emerging industry” because it has developed over the course of the last decade in a fashion that seems to be changing the world literally overnight.

We have been dealing with legislation such as this for quite some time. I can say that in principle we need to support a bill such as this, although I do not know that we would be as supportive of the amendment.

In the debate today, we have seen that people are looking at the dynamics of this industry. The dynamics, as my colleague from Malpeque has said, go through agriculture, industry, energy and the environment.

I know my colleague from Malpeque can speak for himself, as he always does and does so forcefully, but I know what he means when he talks about cheap food prices, et cetera. He is talking about the prices paid at the farm gate. He is not talking about, at least in the way I interpret it, in terms of the amount of money that a consumer must pay for products at the point of purchase. He is looking at a situation that sees equitable return on an investment made and contribution given.

I know there are agricultural groups around the country that are calling for the government to get its hands off and to allow market forces to drive the new economy. Everyone in this place is in favour of rewarding initiative and rewarding enterprise but we need to keep in mind the impact this kind of development will have on the structure around the world, the usual economic dynamics.

For example, my colleague from Selkirk—Interlake said earlier that this would only have an impact on 2% of the land mass of Canada. It is nice to throw out a figure like that, but 48% of the land mass in Canada is covered by forest and about another 46% is covered by ice. When we are talking about the rest that is arable, if we are looking at a 2% mass, are we not talking about the overall mass and, in which case, it would be an enormous amount of land dedicated to biomass and biofuel production, or are we talking only about 2% of the arable land already available in Canada?

I think that is significant because we are talking about food policies and their impact worldwide. I will reflect for a moment in a moment on energy and biomass and biofuel.

If we think for a moment about what has been happening around the world where, as I said in the previous question, South Africa is already being considered the Middle East of the biofuel production business, it has in excess of one billion acres already dedicated toward the production of biomass for biofuel. In a part of the world that is constantly looking for food aid, we can imagine what is happening to the food sources.

In fact, in countries around the world where the agricultural production is dependent upon rainfall for its water sources, production costs and food costs have now gone up by 50% over last year, and that rise is escalating. It is escalating at such a rate that UN agencies are already concerned, not only about the quantum of demand for food aid, but also the cost. Over the last year, costs have increased by 20%. One can just imagine the demand on all the countries that are engaged in attempting to provide food aid to the most needy when the land closest by is being dedicated to biomass and biofuel production.

We are going down that same road. In North America, for example, Nebraska has decided that it will use as its economic strategy an increase in the land utilized for corn or biomass and biofuel. Nebraska is dedicating an additional one million acres this year alone. It is already producing a billion gallons of ethanol per annum in order to feed the growing American demand, the American demand that has seen production plants increase from 100 to 150 last year and is expected to reach 450 plants in this coming year.

There will be a huge and constant demand as we cross over into environmental concerns and greenhouse gas emissions, especially in North America and in Europe where we see that 80% of personal energy consumption through vehicles takes place.

Of the 800 million vehicles on the road today, 70% of them are on roads in Europe or North American. As I said earlier on, when China and India begin to produce vehicles to meet a demand for an emerging middle class, it will equal North America and Europe.

Every time 10% of the population in India and in China buy a car, 200 million more vehicles will be on the road. Clearly, the demand on traditional energy sources, those greenhouse gas emitting sources, will be huge. It will be equally impressive on those new technologies that are emerging in the ethanol production and other biomass products.

I mentioned Brazil earlier on. My colleague on the opposite side made reference to Brazil as well. Brazil has 300 million acres dedicated to the production of biomass for the purpose of ethanol production. India already has 35 million acres dedicated to the same type of industry. Indonesia has 16 million acres. These are not places that we have traditionally associated with land utilization for the production of anything other than food.

My colleague from the NDP said a moment ago that they were doing it at the expense of the rain forest and the consequent result on multi-environment and on other issues associated with the depletion of rain forests, not only in the Amazon but everywhere else around the world.

We must deal with those pressures because they are closer to us today than we imagine. It is great to talk about the competitiveness and productivity of our own agricultural sector. We want our farmers to make more money but we want them to do it in terms of producing for the demand that is there in the world. For what? The first goal should be to provide, with all due respect to my colleague from Malpeque, cheap food or low cost, high quality food but not at the expense of the farmer. How many people would be in business if they could not get their money? We want them to do that but we also want them to be wary about the kinds of policies that may have implications for virtually everything else.

One area that I do not think has not been explored sufficiently is the true cost of the production of ethanol. Some of these factors, which we used to rain upon all the industrial enterprises not that long ago to include all the true inputs in industrial production, need to be applied to any kind of alternative energy sources.

However, we must develop the new technology for those energy sources. We need to build a green economy. We need to invest in innovation. We need to invest in the technologies that will make us not only competitive but environmentally friendly and conscious of the impact for greenhouse gas emissions.

However, we can never forget those who are less fortunate than us. As I said earlier on, over 40 million Americans who live below the poverty line will experience this year a 40% increase in the cost of their food.

In an environment where the economy is submitting to all the vagaries that we normally see in the cyclical economic environment, the last thing people need is to see the vulnerable, not only in North America, but everywhere else around the world, submit to the high pressures of excessive food costs at the expense of environmental issues, technological issues and international relations.

We owe it to ourselves in this kind of debate to ensure that our governments keeps their feet firmly to the ground and understand that the implications of amendments like this to a bill like this go well beyond the stated purpose of the debate in the House.

[James Bezan, Conservative, Selkirk—Interlake, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I want to deal with some of the issues the member is raising because he is talking about the need for food in countries that cannot afford it. If we look at the developing world, we realize that they are agrarian-based societies. The best way to start generating wealth in an agrarian-based society is allow it to start getting paid for what it produces.

Here is an opportunity with biofuels where it can actually see an opportunity for increased revenue through the biofuel industry as well as have the incentive to grow more. The problem we have in today's world is that the commodity prices have been so low up until this year that there was no incentive, especially manually in developing countries, to go out and plant a crop.

It is important that we provide these countries with an incentive, and that incentive comes from the marketplace which we all can support, to plant more crops and with that generate more food for their people as well.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I fully understand that concept. There is no reason why anyone would plant anything in the ground if they are not going to get a return not only on their investment but also their labour and effort.

I fear that on occasion we tend to romanticize a career or a job decision that has long gone beyond the moment that we fixed it in time. While this absolutely true about family farms, many of those family farms are such in name only.

I do not think that any part of this debate is designed to in any way undermine the viability of any agricultural enterprise. I do not think anyone has that in mind and if they do, they are in the wrong place.

[Tony Martin, NDP, Sault Ste. Marie, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I was intrigued by the member's comments with regard to the impact that this will have on the food supply and food security, particularly when we look at the whole world.

Many of us who paid attention to what happened in some of the third world jurisdictions, particularly Central and South America, will understand what happened when North America decided it was going to respond to its craving for coffee. Whole tracts of land were taken over to grow a crop that was a cash crop, the product that came to North America, but really did not provide for the local folks who used to have that land to grow their own food, vegetables, fruit and so on. We saw the impact that has had on the world and some of our poorer countries.

That could actually happen here in Canada in our backyard if we are not careful. That is why we are asking for greater scrutiny on this brand new initiative, one that is taking us places we have never been before. The member might want to comment further on that.

[Joe Volpe, Liberal, Eglinton—Lawrence, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his observation and it is quite fine to think in terms of oversight and scrutiny. My understanding of the bill and the bill that preceded this is that we already have the oversight capacity in this House. Whether we utilize that oversight capacity is another matter. Maybe the member is right to be concerned that people in governments do not always implement the kinds of things that they say they have already approved.

In general, it would be equally a mistake to think that people who actually consume an end product are culpable because the redistribution of the wealth that is generated as a result does not flow in its appropriate proportions to those who are at the origin of that production cycle.

The hon. member mentions coffee. Some of the wealth that has been created around coffee is just absolutely mind-boggling. I can cite an example because I happened to have studied this a little while ago. For example, in Italy alone there is the consumption of three espressos per day, per person, at a retail value of about $180 million a day, every day of the year. That is only for that product. So there is a production cycle that should be producing wealth for the original farmers of the coffee beans and those who work the lands to generate that.

I cannot have an influence on the countries of origin. I can only have an impact on how we might view our responsibilities internationally. If the hon. member for Sault Ste. Marie--