Joe Comartin

[Species At Risk Act, June 11th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, let me respond to the stewardship issue first. The government keeps trying to beat up on the opposition parties, and I do not know of any other way to say it, by trotting out the work it already has done regarding stewardship and what the bill will allow for. It is not an issue. We are fully supportive of that. There is not one member of the committee who did not see the value of the stewardship programs that already exist and what has been established under the bill for the future. That is not an issue. We agree that is the best way to do it. That is not what the argument is about.

What it is really about is what if it does not work? What if we get recalcitrant people over there? What if we do not compensate them well enough and they just cannot do it? Those are the other issues. That is what the fight over the bill was about as far as stewardship is concerned. It was not that we not do it, it was just the opposite, that we already do some of it. I do not know what else I can say in response to that other than to press the government as much as possible to do it in the proper fashion for which the bill sets out a framework.

With regard to it covering Canada, it goes back to the whole issue of discretion. It does not cover migratory birds. The government had a shot at it with this last round of amendments. It included aquatic species but did not include migratory birds. The reality is that if the species is on provincial land, it is discretionary as to whether it will be invoked or not. On private land it is the same thing. The mandatory part of it is very limited. I am not backing off on that at all.

As far as legal opinions, of course we can always trot out the lawyer jokes but I am sorry, this issue is too serious for that. Mr. Justice La Forest, a retired supreme court justice and an acknowledged expert, is very clearly of the opinion that the legislation from a constitutional jurisdiction standpoint could go much further. That is the position which I took.

[Species At Risk Act, June 11th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, when I was elected I had a vision that when I would be making this address to the House at third reading we would have, as a total government, approached the bill with an environmental prism. We would have looked at the bill through that prism and as a government we would have said this is what the environment requires. We have a responsibility to future generations to protect endangered species not only for ourselves as a sovereign state but for the rest of the world.

I envisioned that we would have taken into account the crisis that we are faced with in this country with regard to endangered species. We now have approximately 400 species on the list and we know that list is nowhere near complete. We have heard testimony that it is much larger than that. I thought we would have acted in good conscience with the best interests of Canada and of endangered species.

I would have envisioned that we would have recognized the work that we did with the international community dating back to 1992 when we were the first country to sign on to the protocol after the earth summit. It required us as a sovereign nation to protect the species and biodiversity of Canada for ourselves and the rest of the world; and to use that as a guiding principle. We would have taken into account the overwhelming support in this country for strong, effective legislation to protect endangered species.

I would have expected that I would be standing here saying, yes, we did all those things. We did take into account, would have been my thinking, the interests in the country including the provincial governments, the rights of the first nations, aboriginal communities and the Metis, to self-government and control of their land and their land claims as they exist now, as well as the interests of private owners of land and users of land. We would have taken them into account, but they would not have been the primary consideration. The overriding question being: How do we effectively protect our endangered species?

As I entered into the process as the environment critic for my party I believe the general community had a number of specific points that had to be considered and we had to get, at the end of the day, each one of these points to be part of the legislation.

There was the scientific listing of the species. There was the issue of the need for mandatory critical habitat. There was the question of jurisdiction; that is, how extensive would that mandatory critical habitat be. Would it be limited to certain areas of the country or would it have a broader range. Finally, there was the issue of compensation for those individuals, groups and communities negatively impacted in an economic sense by the legislation.

In my opinion the results in the legislation generally fail to meet effectively the requirements of each one of those issues. Before I go into that in more detail, it is important to address the issue of what happened with the bill. That of course raises the whole question of democracy in the House, specifically at the committee level. I suppose one should say the lack of democracy.

Even though I was only elected in November 2000, I am proud to say, and maybe a little arrogant to say it, I was really quite prepared for what would happen at the committee level. The government confirmed that I was quite prepared, because the democratic process at the committee level is generally a sham. However in the environment committee it was not and I was really surprised.

I saw members from all parties, members on the government side, from the Alliance, from the Bloc and from the Progressive Conservatives, come to the committee with a democratic framework in their minds. They came with fixed ideas and strongly held fixed opinions. However they came with open minds. In a number of cases, and I include myself in this, we were convinced either by other members on the committee, but most often by the testimony we heard, to change or at least moderate our opinions and those strong positions that we had brought to the bill and to the committee.

It sounds almost idealistic, but the environment committee is what parliamentary democracy and specifically the committee process within parliamentary democracy is all about. One has to credit not only the members, which I have already done, but specifically acknowledge the work of the chair and both vice chairs of the committee. They provided leadership and the framework by their rulings in the way they conducted the meetings and they allowed the democratic process to work.

The result was we received a bill from the environment department. These individuals collectively modified the bill significantly. We spent a lot of time on it, with well over 100 hours of hearings, a great number of witnesses and we changed the bill using the expertise of those witnesses and the expertise reflected in the individuals who sat around the table.

People ask if I am enjoying my work in the House. My answer universally is yes, I am very much. I would not give this up other than if I had to give up my wife and kids. They are the only ones that I would not sacrifice for this experience. Because of the people I have encountered and more specifically in the process on this bill is one reason I can say that.

We heard from concerned scientists. Their whole life has been dedicated to protecting endangered species and to researching and developing plans as to how we best protect them.

The other group that was most impressive were individuals from first nations and aboriginal communities. These people are on the frontlines. Yesterday and again this morning we heard the minister speak about the people who would carry this out. If anybody will save our endangered species, it probably will be first nations. It will not be this government. They are already doing good work.

What happened? We heard testimony at committee and the committee did its job. The bill was changed to reflect what was really needed.The bill came back to the House at report stage with 75 plus amendments, the majority of which came from the government. Those amendments were clearly designed to reverse almost all the work done by committee and not to strengthen the bill. The amendments would not make the bill more effective. In fact they would do just the opposite, in every case.

Let us look at the scientific listing of endangered species. We repeatedly heard the minister ask us to trust him, the government and the framework built into the bill. What has happened with that list? Initially the scientific group that prepared the list was shoved off to the side. The list compiled by it would not be incorporated into the bill. Only at one of the very last meetings we had with the minister before the committee did he finally concede the point that the list should be included. That is not from where he or his department started.

As recently as a week ago, another amendment came forward. Somehow the light shone on the government. The amendment strengthened a bit more the role of the scientific group. What is before the House today is not what the scientific community wanted and it is certainly not what the committee wanted.

What about critical habitat? This was an issue that we felt was of the utmost importance and it should be mandatory. The amendments put forward by the government a couple of months ago, which reduced the effectiveness of the bill, were slightly modified a week ago with a last minute amendment. However that is not enough. The mandatory nature of the bill is still extremely weak in many ways.

I want to use one example and that is extending the protection of the bill to migratory birds. In spite of some really strange legal opinions we received through the environment department, including one from a former supreme court justice who is an expert in this area plus other constitutional experts, we were told that the Government of Canada had the right to protect migratory birds. Is the government doing so? The answer is no. That is just one example of the lack of mandatory critical habitat protection.

What did we do about jurisdiction? Of course given the historical nature of Canada, we could not have gone through the bill without dealing with jurisdiction. There is constant friction between the provinces and the federal government over who does what.

I said in the House yesterday that if we looked at the role the provinces had played, because they clearly have some jurisdiction, it was not impressive. Not all the provinces have legislation. Those that have it do not have anywhere near the number of endangered species they should have on their list. Their enforcement mechanisms are wanting in almost every case.

It was very important, if one again applied that environmental prism, if one really believed that we would do something to protect endangered species, that the federal government extend its jurisdiction, which it clearly has the authority to do.

What have we ended up with? With this legislation in terms of federal lands, we cover approximately 5% of the country. We cover approximately one-third of all species. Therefore, two-thirds are left to the provinces and, in most cases, are left to nothing because they are not covered. We did not meet that standard with regard to jurisdiction or mandatory critical habitat.

The final issue we felt was very important was that of compensation. We heard a lot of evidence about this at the committee. The New Democratic Party of Canada was very clear from the beginning. If as a society we were going say that this was our social responsibility, then we could not dump that social responsibility on only certain individuals. Collectively we had to share that burden.

We heard again from the government mostly “trust us”. We made one minor amendment as to how the compensation would work. The government told us that we would get regulations to cover the rest of it. We never saw those regulations. It said it would do that later but “trust us”.

We should look very closely at how we handle the compensation. We should look very closely at who we compensate. We have nowhere near that in this legislation.

My time is running short and I want to go back to the issue of the “trust me” syndrome with which we are faced. We had the opportunity with the bill to move away from that and say that this would be the law. There is no question about co-operation, we will do that. There is no question about stewardship and the co-operative stewardship that already exists to some degree, which the bill enhances. That is recognized. It is the whole question of what do we do if we do not get that co-operation.

I already indicated why we cannot trust the government. I talked about the late amendments. We saw a late amendment, for instance, just to add to that list, covering aquatic species which we did not have earlier. The committee wanted it, put it into its report but it was taken out. It was put back in about a week ago.

We had a whole list of these things coming to plate late in the day. If that is an indication of how much we can trust the government, we have to say it is not good enough.

There was a whole history as well, before the bill came to the House, under other pieces of legislation where the government did not act when it could have.

In conclusion, the environmental prism with which I came to this House and wanted applied to the bill, and I believe Canadians wanted applied to the bill, was not used.

We have simply taken a look at this and the government has said “We promised this back in 1993 in our red book. We have to deliver. It does not matter what we deliver, let us just get a piece of legislation through. If it is a sham, if it does not do what it is supposed to do, we will still go out and spin it. We will convince Canadians that we have done something”. That is not the reality. We have not done enough here. We have failed.

[Species at Risk Act, June 10th, 2002]

Yes, which my friend from the Progressive Conservative Party wants to claim credit for. I am prepared to give him a little bit, but the reality is that on that section all members of the committee, I believe, were in favour of that amendment. Several of us, myself included, had amendments of a similar nature, as did members of the Liberal Party who sat on that committee.

What I would have liked to see, and I believe the people of Canada would have liked to see it, is that same attitude with regard to dropping Motion No. 109. I would have liked to see the government taking a similar tack with regard to all the other amendments that it has in Group No. 5 and in fact in the four groups before that.

With regard to this set of amendments, we will hear debate about the need for this to be a flexible bill, for discretion. We heard it from the Minister of the Environment earlier today when we were faced with closure by the government. I do not think one person on the environment committee would disagree about the need for flexibility within the bill. What we were saying to the minister, and what we continue to say him and to the government, is that this is not the be-all and the end-all. It is really the issue of the carrot and the stick, discretion being the carrot and certain mandatory legislative provisions being the stick.

What has happened with the minister and with the legislation as envisioned by the government, and now put back by these amendments, is way too large a degree of discretion being incorporated into the bill and obviously, if it passes, into the law, and nowhere near enough mandatory requirements.

We heard again today about the importance of co-operating with the provinces and other authorities, municipal authorities in some cases, and certainly with the first nations Metis and aboriginal communities in many respects. Again, the committee was very sensitive to those needs but we also recognized, particularly with regard to the provinces that have legislation in this field, some just very recent, that it quite frankly was not working or was not working very well at all.

It is absolutely necessary for the federal government to play an active role. The amendments in Group No. 5 are really in many respects putting back discretion to where the environment committee said that the government had gone too far and should build in some mandatory structure in the legislation. This is a complex area of the bill. We cannot downplay how complex the legislation is in terms of the infrastructure the environment committee built into it. We were saying to the government that it needed the infrastructure, the ability to go in and at times enforce. The basic approach would be to co-operate, to get the job done and protect all these species, but ultimately if it does not happen there needs to be the stick. There is a need for being able to move in. The legislation does not give that to us.

Let me address some of the specific points we are faced with in Group No. 5 that were changed from what the environment committee did. I want to give the example of a little one. It irks me because it is so petty on the part of the government.

A committee of scientists has been working for over two decades now, I believe, on listing endangered species, those that have expired and those on the critical list, if I can put it that way. To a great extent these scientists have done it with little or no funding and, in a lot of cases, with little co-operation from government departments. They went ahead because of their dedication to the natural environment and to the protection of endangered species.

Our committee told the government it had to start to support that committee and its work on identifying and listing endangered species. That means providing it with the necessary financial resources. Our committee built in some specific structure around that. What happened? One of amendments would take that back. If the government amendment goes through, we would be saying that it would be at the minister's sole discretion to decide whether the work this committee is doing justifies financial support.

The obvious question that jumps to my mind is, how soon will it be before the minister says that he or she does not really like what the committee is doing, that it is not conscientious enough about the minister's concerns and that the committee would not be funded any more? That is the kind of pettiness that the department has built into the bill.

There is a broader area around the whole question of protecting critical habitat. I know that I am nearly out of time, but I could go on for another hour. Because of the complexity of this question, I want to make just two points. There were interim protections built in that were not there before and now will be taken out once again if these amendments go through. The extension of the protection of the bill, and subsequently the act, to aquatic and migratory birds is being severely curtailed by the amendments being proposed by the government in Group No. 5.

The list goes on. In spite of all the spin that even now some members of the committee are putting on it, the reality is that the bill is extremely weak. It is much weaker than what the United States and Mexico have. The government is clearly showing its lack of commitment to protecting endangered species in this country.

[Species at Risk Act, June 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, as I rise to speak to Group No. 5, I note that it is interesting to hear some of the members from the opposite side of the House putting a political spin on this legislation that is significantly different from what we saw in prior incarnations of this debate on the earlier groups. I think we will see even more of that when we get to the debate on third reading.

What we have to keep in mind in addressing these specific Group No. 5 amendments is that in fact there are no major changes on the part of the government and no major recognition on the part of the government of the democratic process within the committee structure of the House. The reality is that the committee did its work and it made the amendments, with all party support in a number of cases. When that came back to the House at report stage, we were faced with an overwhelming number of amendments from the government, including a good number of them in Group No. 5, which gutted the work that the committee did.

We have before us 20 amendments in Group No. 5, 15 of them government amendments striking down all the work the committee did on those amendments in those sections, with one exception, which we heard about just today, when the government backed off and dropped Motion No. 109.

[Species at Risk Act, June 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for the minister again. My friend from the Bloc has raised this in a peripheral way. I want to go at it directly.

Does the Department of the Environment have a legal opinion or a confirmation that Bill C-5 will meet the international commitments that we have made with regard to protecting endangered species, protecting the environment and specifically enhancing biodiversity? There are a number of opinions out there that the bill does not in fact do that.

[Species at Risk Act, June 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I apologize for that. It is a proper admonition for my part.

The reality is that the committee did spend a lot of time. They were experts and knowledgeable people and also representative of the country in terms of what type of legislation we need. Do they not get any credit? Do we shovel these government amendments through or do we allow the committee work to stand as being a much more accurate representation of where the country is at?

[Species at Risk Act, June 10th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, the minister claims that the people who advised him were the ones on the ground and who knew what type of legislation we should have.

Would that not be even more so for the people on the environment committee who spent 12 to 15 months of regular work on trying to redraft the bill because it was so weak. Do they not get any credit for their expertise? All political parties, including your own, Mr. Minister, sitting on the committee made substantial amendments.

[The Environment, June 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, I would feel more confident because of some other things he said. The minister said earlier this week that the national progress report on sustainable development, which should have been submitted to the UN by now and he has it, could be a valuable resource in the consultation process. Yet the minister is keeping it under wraps and out of sight from the public.

If the minister is really serious about this consultation, he should open it up. Why can it not be made public and why can this parliament and the public not have access to it?

[The Environment, June 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, poll after poll has shown that the vast majority of Canadians, including 72% of Albertans, are concerned about climate change and want the federal government to ratify Kyoto.

The provinces want to engage in a national debate. The environment minister has repeatedly said that there would be a full and open consultation so all Canadians could be heard.

Why then are the current consultations taking place behind closed doors, closed to the public and by invitation only?

[Crtc, June 7th, 2002]

Mr. Speaker, by refusing to overturn a seriously flawed CRTC decision ignoring its own guidelines in the granting of a broadcasting license to Craig Broadcast Systems Inc. the cabinet has shown a complete disregard for the local programming and Canadian content requirements of the Broadcasting Act.

As a result of this fundamentally flawed decision already underserviced communities like Windsor, dominated by American programming, could see and probably will see a substantial decline in local programming. The decision completely ignores the needs of communities in southern Ontario like Hamilton and Kitchener--Waterloo. If not reversed it will result in the falling by the wayside of local programming and services over the next decade.

The Liberal government has once again shown a complete lack of commitment to promoting local content and diversity in broadcasting in the country.