Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, I thank my esteemed colleague from South Shore—St. Margarets for sharing her time with me. Unfortunately, I disagree with her last comment that we have time to debate the bill now. Given the gag order, enough time to debate the bill is exactly what we do not have. I want to speak to what is happening here. I am going to throw in Bill C-30, because I was not allowed to speak to it. We rushed through it so fast that I did not get a speech at second reading. For Bill C-30 and Bill C-31, back-to-back omnibus budget bills, both had a reduction of debate. Due to the newly minted majority Liberal government, we were not given the normal amount of time to have debate before moving to the vote at second reading. I am sure the Speaker recognizes how often I have raised this concern in the House. It has accelerated. It is becoming de rigueur. It is almost with every single bill that we are told we have had enough time to talk about it and we move on. There are many things that one would focus on with respect to two omnibus bills. What I want to focus on in the time I have is with respect to the one we are debating today, Bill C-31, which is 331 pages long. I lugged it around with me all weekend. There is only one part of it that I want to raise now, but there would be more. When we get to committee perhaps I will get an opportunity to say a word or two. These are budget implementation acts. Bill C-30 has now passed second reading and Bill C-31 is what we are debating now. One would think there would be a very strong connection to the budget. That is what the point is; these are implementation of the budget. In Bill C-30 and Bill C-31, I want to talk about the significant changes to the Pest Control Products Act. We remember that the 2025 budget was all about build Canada strong. There is one line about the Pest Control Products Act, which is now the subject of changes in Bill C-30 and Bill C-31. Here is one line from budget 2025, which states, “the government proposes to amend legislation to remove cyclical pesticide re-evaluations to enable modern, risk-based oversight.” According to Prevent Cancer Now and Ecojustice, one of the country’s leading environmental law groups, this is not about modern risk-based oversight, but about reducing the regulation of pesticides, reducing environment and health and safety controls that can actually affect human health, as well as the environment, in ways that I found completely shocking. Because the debate on Bill C-30 was shut down after three hours, there was not time for every member or even every party to make a speech. I did manage to ask the parliamentary secretary for finance when it was first tabled how it was that there were these provisions to so weaken pesticide oversight and pesticide reviews. I asked if it would be possible to have a section of the bill, division 8, go to a committee on health or the environment to be studied. The hon. parliamentary secretary said he would look into it, but I have heard nothing further and, as far as we know, this is going to the finance committee, not a health and safety committee. I have not had an opportunity to speak to this in the House, and it does relate to Bill C-31, because it is more of the same. Bill C-30 says, which is astonishing, that if a minister decides that a pest control product is so dangerous it cannot be used, that usually is the end of the matter. This refers to a pesticide, and this covers herbicides, insecticides, rodenticides and all manner of products that are intended to kill living things, insecticides and herbicides being the most common. However, now, because of Bill C-30, which as I said was pushed through second reading after three hours of debate, the cabinet can override the Minister of Health or the Minister of Environment if they consider it “necessary to do so to protect national economic security, regional economic security, or national food security.” Going back to the original budget, we see that they have thrown in this justification here and there. Sometimes, it is referenced as having to make these measures because they want to move to, as I mentioned before, modern oversight. In other places, it is referenced as though we can bring down the cost of groceries if we use more pesticides. There is no evidence for this whatsoever. Having worked on pesticides in this country as an environmental lawyer, and before that as an activist, I have worked on pesticide issues in this country since 1975. In any case, no government has ever attempted something as reckless as what Bill C-30 would do in saying that the decision of the minister responsible, when a substance is too dangerous to be used, could be overturned by cabinet, at cabinet’s discretion, if it seems that it affects, astonishingly, “national economic security, regional economic security or national food security”. These are the kinds of cuts to regulations that Margaret Thatcher engaged in that led to mad cow disease. We do not cut corners on health and safety. We do not cut corners on pesticide regulation for national economic concerns, overriding a minister of environment or a minister of health. It is quite surprising. I was unable to speak to Bill C-30 at second reading debate, and now we have come to Bill C-31. I have to say I was astonished, in reading the 331 pages of Bill C-31, to find that it too takes aim at the Pest Control Products Act. This time it is found in division 13 in changes to the Pest Control Products Act to reduce the mandatory review every 15 years to look at a substance and, if the situation has changed, to have an evaluation. They are routine, but the bill we have before us today would change the review, and this gets murky. As someone who practised law, I know that one of the things we hate to see in new legislation is a change to the definitions because, by the time most legislation has gone around for a couple of years, and this legislation has been around for decades, the meaning of the words is clear, so there is not a lot of room for uncertainty and not knowing what we are dealing with. In this legislation, we suddenly have the discretionary initiating of an assessment and then, if the minister is convinced that, on the basis of the assessment, the health and safety and the environmental risks of a registered pest control product have increased significantly, then the minister may have a re-evaluation, but the minister may also decide at any time to stop the re-evaluation. Therefore, there would be no certainty and, certainly from a public health point of view and from an environmental point of view, this would fundamentally weaken the regime within which we use chemicals and products that are, by definition, intended to be toxic. They are intended to kill things. It is not an accident. That is their purpose. Therefore, the notion that we would no longer have cyclical re-evaluations undermines science. That is the bottom line. Ecojustice, one of Canada’s pre-eminent environmental law groups, finds that this must be amended, that we must maintain cyclical re-evaluations and uphold science-based decision-making. Earlier today, one of the members here presented a really important petition, and I am wondering if these things are not connected. Is there a pro-pesticide bias emerging from the current government that connects with cuts at the Swift Current agriculture research station in Swift Current, Saskatchewan? It was the country’s pre-eminent research hub for many years in organic agriculture. Does the current government dislike the idea of organic agriculture? Does it want to promote pesticide-based agriculture? Again, here we are. This bill has had, as far as I can count, about one and a half days of debate. In its first day of debate, most of the debate time was taken up by the farewell speech of the hon. member for Laurier—Sainte-Marie. The time is up, but we have to let Canadians know that this is unacceptable.
