44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 29, 2023 11:00AM
- May/29/23 6:21:44 p.m.
- Watch
- Re: Bill S-5
Madam Speaker, I was talking about how Alberta has tackled the used tire problem. Just outside of my riding, in Legal, Alberta, there is a tire recycling facility. It uses used tires to build things such as playground matting, access matting for the oil fields and curb stops. Members may have seen rubber curb stops in parking lots, where, instead of there being a concrete curb stop, it is rubber. That is being manufactured there. Fence panels are being manufactured out of used tires. The facility is finding all of these innovative ways to make used tires into other products that we can use in our everyday lives. That was championed and organized in Alberta about 30 years ago, and I am fairly excited about that as well.
The other initiative that I am surprised to discover does not exist in other parts of the country is the Alberta ditch cleanup program, involving charitable organizations. My daughter has participated in it as part of a fundraiser for her school. The 4-H programs across Alberta work on this as well. The Alberta government donates to charity the cost of the labour that is put into cleaning up the ditches. Teams go out, gather all of the garbage from ditches, put it in orange plastic bags and set the bags at the side of the road to be picked up. This is a program that happens every spring after the snow melts. It has made Alberta a clean and tidy place. All the garbage in ditches gets cleaned up, and I am excited about that. What I was surprised to find is that other provinces do not have these kinds of programs. I was surprised that ditches are not necessarily cleaned up in other parts of the country.
The other thing that I was surprised to find out Ottawa does not have, for example, is the drink container recycling program that Alberta has. For my entire life, there has been a drink container recycling program. When I was a teenager, something that supplemented my income was collecting bottles and cans. I know that many a time in high school, there were fundraisers through bottle drives. We would collect used drink containers and bring them back to get the deposit money. Recycling drink containers to keep them out of the landfill and the environment has been in place in Alberta for a very long time. I was surprised that other parts of the country do not have the same program. I know the drink container program in Alberta has been very successful. It has broad support. It is kind of a circular economy idea and seems to work fairly well.
I also want to note that Edmonton has kind of led the way in terms of waste disposal. It creates power from all of the garbage that comes out of Edmonton. It grinds up the waste, separates out the metals, recycles the metals and makes power out of the rest of the garbage. It has a composting division as well. Edmonton has been recognized around the world as one of the leaders in waste disposal. These are some of the programs and projects that have happened in Alberta that I am really excited about.
Another, more local, initiative that I am pretty excited about as well is the take-it-or-leave-it programs at a lot of Alberta's transfer stations. For those who live in the country, like I do, nobody comes by to pick up garbage, so we have to bring it to the transfer stations ourselves. At many of these places, there are what are called “take it or leave it” sections. If people have things that are not garbage per se, and they do not know what to do with them but want to dispose of them, they can place them in the take-it-or-leave-it section. It is kind of like a garage sale, except that people do not have to pay for the things. If people have items that still have value, but they do not want them anymore, they place them there, and people come and go through that.
Around Grande Prairie, there is a company that is leading the country in styrofoam recycling. I am really excited about that program as well. Styrofoam recycling is something that needs to happen, and a company in Alberta is leading the way on that.
These are all initiatives that come out of Alberta that I am really excited about. They keep our communities cleaner and ensure that our waterways stay clean. Speaking of our waterways, I do not know if members know this, but Alberta waterways are all monitored extensively. If there is a hydrocarbon spill anywhere in the province, if a hydrocarbon gets into a creek somewhere, it will set off a sensor within minutes.
I know that when an ATV tipped over, it set off sensors in the waterways. It was just a bit of fuel that spilled out of an ATV and set off the sensors. There are sensors in all of the waterways around Alberta, and they notify the Alberta government that there may have been a spill in a certain area and to investigate it. That happens within minutes.
I have experienced it. I have watched this kind of thing happen in my own neighbourhood when there has been a spill, and immediately people showed up to jump on the source of that spill and clean up the mess quickly. In one case, a fuel truck tipped over on the highway, and months were spent cleaning that up. That was caught because all the waterways in Alberta are monitored very closely for hydrocarbons. It is something that is unique to the province. I do not think that this happens in other parts of the country.
These are some of the initiatives I wanted to highlight. Albertans are taking care of the place we live, taking care of our environment and ensuring that we live in one of the most pristine parts of the country. The natural beauty of Alberta is unparalleled in the whole country.
As well, there are a variety of natural landscapes in Alberta, from far in the south where we have nearly desert conditions, to the Foothills, the Rocky Mountains, the Prairies, the boreal forest and the wetlands dotted across Alberta. These are places where we play, work and raise our families.
The other thing I wanted to note is the Alberta air monitoring that happens in my riding around the town of Peace River. There is a lot of air monitoring that happens there. I do not think the air monitoring that happens in northern Alberta is something that happens in many places across the country. These are some of the things that Alberta has put in place to ensure that we continue to live in a clean environment.
That brings us to Bill S-5. This has been a challenging bill. There was a particular amendment placed into the bill. We were generally in favour of the bill until there was an amendment placed in the bill by the NDP. It undermines provincial jurisdiction. This is around tailings ponds. It is targeting a particular disposal method, and it really feels like Alberta is being targeted with this particular amendment. It also completely undermines the idea of provincial jurisdiction.
The provinces, in many cases, are responsible for the monitoring and administration of these tailings ponds. These are not things the federal government generally gets involved in. The federal government is now placing itself in the middle and sticking its fingers where they do not belong, in provincial jurisdiction. That has been a thorn in the side of Albertans for a very long time.
Canada is happy to take the resource revenues and it is happy to take income tax revenue from the entire country, but when it comes to allowing us to do the things that we do to build wealth, create value or manage our own resources, the federal government is often sticking its fingers in and saying we cannot do something or we are not doing a good enough job or generally just disrespecting Alberta.
I imagine most Canadians are unaware that Alberta leads the way on all of those things that I talked about before, including the disposal of PCBs, our used tire program, our ditch cleanup program, our drink container recycling programs, the Edmonton waste disposal and styrofoam recycling. I can tell members what Alberta does not do for sure: It does not dump millions of litres of unprocessed sewage into the rivers and streams. That is something that definitely does not happen in Alberta. That is something we have to ensure.
Now we see this repeated trend of the Liberal government: It inserts itself into places of provincial jurisdiction. While I note that this is an NDP amendment and that the Liberals had signalled that they were opposed to that amendment initially, they voted for it at the last minute, which is why we can no longer support Bill S-5.
This is a bill that now places the federal government in competition for regulating tailings ponds. This is entirely a provincial jurisdiction. It is something that Alberta has done very well for a very long time. This is something that Alberta, in terms of keeping our waterways clean, our air clean and our soil clean, is capable of, and it is something that is not the jurisdiction of the federal government. For this amendment to be placed in there at the eleventh hour is extremely frustrating.
There are some other parts of Bill S-5 that we are excited and happy about. There is the repeal of a whole section that is no longer needed. We think that this is an important piece to pull out.
We want to ensure that assessments for new substances that may be toxic are developed within 24 months. We think it is important that there be a decision within 24 months. This allows people to get an understanding that if they propose something, they would get an answer within 24 months. That allows for some stability in this whole system.
It also removes duplicated monitoring that had been happening. There were two separate licensing bodies or monitoring bodies, and because of jurisdictional squabbles, sometimes things would either fall through the cracks or substances would be brought to the wrong authority. This bill would remove the duplicated monitoring that has happened in the past, and hopefully will streamline the process and ensure that substances that are brought forward to be assessed will be assessed properly, in a timely fashion and by the right regulator. We want to make sure of that.
There is the issue of the right to a clean environment. That comes up regularly in this bill as well. There are a whole host of things to be said about it. Conservatives believe that in the environment where we live, the air should be clean and the soil should be clean, and we should not be at risk of being in contact with toxic chemicals that might cause cancer. We should not be in contact with toxic substances. We believe we should have an environment that encourages human health, that ensures that we do not get sick from the places that we live or the air that we breathe or the water that we drink. These are basic principles.
The idea of the right to a clean environment is kind of mentioned in this bill, but it is not fleshed out in a way that is clear. This may lead to some frustrations in terms of the court action happening over these kinds of things. We hope that this right to a clean environment would, over time, be clarified to ensure that people could not take the government to court over it, saying that they feel their environment is not clean enough. That is not what we want to see happening with this right to a clean environment; we want it to ensure that the government works to ensure that wherever one lives in Canada, the air is clean, the soil is clean and the water is clean.
With that, I will wrap up my comments. I look forward to questions and comments.
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