- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Green Party
- Saanich—Gulf Islands
- British Columbia
- Voting Attendance: 61%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $112,862.18
- Government Page
Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. minister for Bill C-61. Ever since it was tabled in December, I have been looking forward to this debate to learn more about the bill. Certainly, as I read it in black and white, it recognizes sovereignty over infrastructure and the right to clean drinking water.
I do not say this in any way, shape or form to suggest that this is not properly thought through, but I am keen to know how we avoid, with training, infrastructure and all the benefits of settler culture privilege, what happened in Walkerton when the provincial government shut down the testing facility, and the water contained E. coli. It did not raise the alarm and people died.
We know that having safe, clean drinking water is the right of indigenous nations. How would the Liberal government ensure this process is adequately funded?
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- Feb/1/24 10:19:03 a.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I am honoured to rise here today on the traditional territories of the Algonquin Anishinabe nation. To them, we say “meegwetch”.
I am presenting a petition that speaks to an issue that has seized this House in a number of different ways in terms of pending legislation. The petitioners are asking the government to take account of the degradation of Canada's waterways and watersheds. The current laws do not adequately protect Canada's waterways and watersheds from irresponsible industrial practice. The petitioners call on Canada to update our water laws to ensure that no industry or single corporation can take precedence over the health of Canada's waterways and watersheds and, by extension, over the health of the people of Canada and the very species that also rely on the health of these waterways. We must ensure that Canada's water laws are updated under the guidance of professionals and specialists in the field of water conservation.
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- Nov/9/23 10:25:22 a.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am tabling e-petition 4375 today. I believe this is the first time this issue has been raised on the floor of the House of Commons in any form and the first petition.
I want to thank the person who initiated this petition, Mary Ann Sjogren-Branch, and Julian Branch who brought this to our attention, as well as Prevent Cancer Now and other networks of grassroots citizens. They are concerned about the presence of asbestos in drinking water. This is an under-studied and unregulated problem. Believe it or not, many municipalities rely on old cement water pipes to deliver water to millions of Canadians and the pipes contain asbestos fibres. When they crack, break or deteriorate slowly, asbestos fibres are getting into our drinking water. As far as we are aware and health studies show, asbestos is very dangerous to us, whether inhaled or ingested, including in our drinking water.
The petitioners are calling for the Government of Canada to take urgent steps to assess the health risk of asbestos in drinking water, to establish a federal-provincial-territorial committee to establish drinking water guidelines for asbestos, to do a complete inventory of asbestos-contaminated water pipes, release this data publicly and develop a plan to replace asbestos-cement water pipes. There are a number of other elements to this petition. The petition draws this to the attention of all members in this place because if we check our own communities, we may find that members' constituents are relying on cement pipes for drinking water that are contaminated with asbestos fibres.
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- Oct/18/23 7:47:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I hate to disillusion the parliamentary secretary in terms of the levels of support the government is giving to water, but on the notion that $650 million is historic for the Great Lakes, back in the days when former prime minister Brian Mulroney made real strides in protecting the Great Lakes, that would be a small amount compared to the billions a year that was being spent.
We had an inland waters directorate in Burlington, Ontario, with several thousand staff. We need to rebuild our capacity in inland waters, fresh water and freshwater science, and that will take a stand-alone agency to create the Canada water agency. That legislation is due any minute.
Does the parliamentary secretary have an update for us? I would be grateful to know.
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Madam Speaker, my colleague is absolutely right. On page 134 of the budget, there is the heading “Protecting Our Freshwater”. The waters mentioned include the Great Lakes. My goodness, the Great Lakes alone require an enormous investment.
Lake Winnipeg right now is one of the largest freshwater lakes in the world and it is dying. It will take much more than the total amount for all these bodies of water to figure out how to protect Lake Winnipeg, which is now dealing with runoff of nitrates and phosphates causing really toxic algae blooms. Lake of the Woods, St. Lawrence River, Fraser River, Saint John River, Mackenzie River and Lake Simcoe are also listed. The Mackenzie River is now a recipient of toxic tailings from the oil sands going downstream into the Northwest Territories.
The $650 million over 10 years is a wish and a prayer.
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- Feb/13/23 3:35:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the petitioners are looking at the current situation of Canada's water laws and the threat to Canada's waterways. It is an astonishing reality that no bureau, department or sub-department in the Government of Canada has the word “water” in its title.
The petitioners call for the Government of Canada to update Canada's water laws to ensure that no industry or corporation takes precedence over the health of Canada's waterways and watersheds, and to ensure that Canada's water laws are updated under the guidance of professionals and specialists in the field of water conservation.
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- Jan/30/23 6:38:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I know my hon. colleague the parliamentary secretary has a very strong affinity for these issues, from working with him when we were both involved with the International Institute for Sustainable Development. I want to correct the record when I said “near Hamilton”. I cannot believe I forgot that the Inland Waters Directorate, when it was strong, was in Burlington, Ontario and did wonderful work.
I am not comforted by what I have heard so far. Yes, we have the Experimental Lakes Area and it does great work and, yes, I am glad we stopped the Harper government from destroying it. However, the Canada water agency needs to be independent of other departments of government. It needs to be properly funded. We need to understand what is happening to our water. Even if we were not looking at a climate crisis, our approach to fresh water in this country has been pathetic for decades. We now are in a climate crisis, which is a water crisis, and the Canada water agency is urgently needed and must be properly funded.
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- Dec/8/22 7:48:16 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is my honour to rise virtually in the House this evening. I am in the wonderful city of Montreal for the 15th meeting of the the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity.
However, I am turning my attention this evening to a question I asked in question period on November 24. The question had a response from the hon. Minister of Transport. This is a complex issue and one that does not come up very often in the House, so forgive me if I step back and set some context before I dive into it.
It is a question on the use of the waters of the Salish Sea from as far up as the tip of Vancouver Island to areas near Parksville, Nanaimo, Ladysmith and certainly in and around the five Gulf Islands within Saanich—Gulf Islands. Our waters are being used as free parking lots to handle bulk carriers and freighters that cannot be efficiently unloaded at the Port of Vancouver.
This costs everyone money. The grain farmers who want their products shipped in a timely way, the grain sellers who want the product delivered and those buying the product line up at the Port of Vancouver where freighters find that their holds cannot be filled. They are sent away, and they cool their jets and sit in the waters of the Salish Sea in places that Transport Canada has dubbed as anchorages. Under common law, the vessels at sea must be given refuge and safe anchorages at times of storms. This is not during storms. This is routine. It is daily and multiplying.
What does this mean? As I pointed out in my question on November 24, it is a loss of quality of life. The constituents of Saanich—Gulf Islands and those throughout the region do not feel consulted. Right now, there is a consultation process taking place, or a public consultation was just disclosed, hosted by the Port of Vancouver. Constituents do not feel consulted; they feel ignored once again, their concerns dismissed.
The Port of Vancouver officials informed the public that the use of the Salish Sea for free parking was going to continue and that it was an essential part of the Port of Vancouver's operations. Of course, nobody pays for it, except, again, the grain farmers, the people buying grain, the people selling grain and the residents of Saanich—Gulf Islands, Cowichan—Malahat—Langford and other regions throughout our marine coastal zones.
The indigenous nations of this area were never consulted either, and they are angry at the idea that their treaty rights under the Douglas treaties mean so little that the Port of Vancouver and the federal government have never engaged with them about this use of our waters.
What else does it mean? It means damage to the southern resident killer whales from the noise of these massive vessels moving and parking in our waters. It means damage to the benthic organisms on the ocean floor, of course, because these being anchorages and not ports, the anchor drops and drags.
This is the point I really wanted to raise in the late show tonight: Days after my question in late November, there was yet another incident in Plumper Sound, where a large bulk carrier dragged its anchor and drifted right into a spot where, had there been another freighter parked, they would have collided. We have had 102 incidents in the period from 2015 to 2020. There were 102 times that these large vessels drifted on their anchors and sometimes collided or nearly collided. In other words, it is a large accident waiting to happen.
The residents of Saanich—Gulf Islands and the people of this area are absolutely fed up to our teeth with this ignoring of our rights and abuse of our ecosystem.
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- Oct/24/22 5:52:57 p.m.
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- Re: Bill S-5
Madam Speaker, I would like to reassure the hon. member for Oshawa that there is no way in this world that we could accuse the Liberal government of being too strong with its actions on single-use plastics.
We have an appallingly weak set of regulations. Nothing in any government announcement or in this act will reduce the use of lightweight plastics in the manufacturing of durable goods. Nothing.
We do know that if we change the way this act is worded, we undermine its constitutionality. I can tell the member that none of those 10 major rivers has anything to do with the plastic contamination that we find on our shorelines in Canada. We need to take action under CEPA. We need to list and regulate the use of substances like polystyrenes for uses like floats and wharfs. They should be banned. They are contaminating our waterways and our wildlife, and, ultimately, they are poisoning us.
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- Oct/20/22 3:09:32 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, “’Establish and fully fund a Canada Water Agency in 2022” and “Modernize the 50-year-old Canada Water Act” are quotes from the Liberal platform. A fully independent and integrated Canada water agency is urgently needed. We lack the scientific capacity to monitor water quality and quantity, to predict impacts and to protect safe water.
The climate crisis is a water crisis. No more announcements. It is time to create the Canada water agency. Will the minister update us as to the plans to do it in 2022?
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- May/30/22 4:29:39 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I believe the hon. member just accused the member for Waterloo of perjuring herself. I do not think that is parliamentary language.
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- May/13/22 12:11:59 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to present a petition today that comes from a number of Canadians concerned for the health of our waterways.
They note that, with regard to fresh water within Canada, not dealing with the large issues of our oceans but looking at our internal waterways, our watersheds are significantly degraded by actions by industry. We need to pursue, as the petitioners claim, the Canada water agency; we need laws that protect water and laws that protect our watersheds, including ones that will support and enrich Canada's fisheries and our whole ecosystems that depend on healthy and sustainable water systems; and we need to bring our laws and our practices up to date to protect Canada's water.
We think we are a water-rich nation. We are not.
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- May/10/22 5:05:20 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I do not mean this to sound tongue-in-cheek, but I think sometimes many Canadians believe this place does not have a prayer. I wonder if we really want to move to a place where we do not even have quiet prayers before the House begins.
Honestly, with the war in Ukraine and the galloping climate emergency, I am pretty much in a state of constant prayer. That does not need to be public, but I wonder if we can concentrate on the issues that really matter right now. I know it is a Bloc Québécois opposition day and the member for Waterloo wants to get to June to talk about the Standing Orders, but I think we need, in our own ways, to work miracles so that our kids have a livable world.
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- Apr/26/22 3:43:53 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think it is common knowledge that the hon. member for Lac-Saint-Louis is a champion of water and water policy in this place. I know this question might make him discomfited, but was he as disappointed as I was that the federal budget 2022 so badly ignores the previous commitments the government has made to deliver on the Canada water agency and to properly fund the neglected area of freshwater science, research and capacity in this country?
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