Madam Speaker, it is once again a real honour and a pleasure to rise here to speak to my private member's bill, Bill C-219, the Canadian environmental bill of rights.

I would like to thank, once again, Linda Duncan, the former MP for Edmonton Strathcona, for drafting the bill and tabling it in, I think, four successive Parliaments, starting in 2009. She is such a real champion for environmental justice in Canada, and an environmental lawyer who knows how to draft bills, despite some of the aspersions we have heard tonight. This is a good bill and a really necessary bill. Her bill, the same bill, basically, passed second reading in 2010. The Liberals and the Bloc Québécois joined the NDP in supporting the bill, so it was passed at second reading. Unfortunately, it died when the election was called in 2011. I am hoping that the Liberals will join the Bloc and the NDP in voting for the bill tomorrow when it goes to a vote.

I would also like to thank everyone else who has supported the bill over the years, especially by helping me understand the legal ramifications of it. I know a lot about ecology, but environmental law is not my specialty. I would like to thank people like Lisa Gue from the David Suzuki Foundation, Stephen Hazell from Nature Canada, Josh Ginsberg and Melanie Snow from Ecojustice, Joseph Castrilli from the Canadian Environmental Law Association, and many others.

Canadians are rightfully proud of their beautiful landscapes and clean environment. They do not want to have it degraded in any way. We have, of course, a number of pieces of federal legislation that protect the environment, including the Canada Environmental Protection Act, CEPA, which deals mainly with toxins. We have heard a lot about it tonight. There is the Fisheries Act, which speaks to aquatic ecosystems, the Pest Control Products Act and others that deal with biodiversity and other aspects of environmental health.

The revised CEPA, through Bill S-5, says that Canadians have the right to live in a healthy and ecologically balanced environment, but that right in CEPA is restricted to the protections within that act. It applies only to CEPA and not to other federal pieces of legislation. Bill C-219 would not add any obligations to the federal government with regard to environmental health. It would merely broaden what is said in CEPA, in terms of the right to a clean and healthy environment, to cover the rest of federal government legislation.

The bill is long overdue. Canada voted in support of a motion at the UN General Assembly last year, which said exactly that, that a right to live in a clean and healthy environment is a human right. The motion passed unanimously. Canadians provinces, Ontario and Quebec, have very similar legislation. The courts are not clogged, despite the concerns I hear from the Conservatives, and the sky has not fallen, although I hope the sky is perhaps a little clearer in Ontario and Quebec because of the rights that are in their pieces of legislation.

I have had discussions with the minister of environment about the bill, and he had some concerns about its constitutionality when we first talked. Therefore, I asked the House of Commons legal team for an opinion, and they were clear in their opinion that this is basically a human rights bill that would add no obligations on the government regarding the environment, other than living up to the obligations set out in other federal pieces of legislation. Because it is based solely on federal legislation, it would not in any way infringe on provincial jurisdiction. It is clearly constitutional. I would like to thank the Bloc Québécois for standing with me on that. It would carve out CEPA, so there would be no conflict with the powers set out in that act, despite what I have heard from members of the Liberal Party and the Conservative Party this evening.

I will close simply by saying that the vast majority of Canadians believe they should have the right to live in a clean and healthy environment. The government has international obligations to make this a reality, and my bill, the Canadian environmental bill of rights, would do just that. Let us get this to committee to make sure it works to ensure a clean environment for all Canadians.

Richard Cannings

$554,545.00