Gabriel Ste-Marie

Madam Speaker, the ultimate proof that Bill C‑39 is a pro-oil bill is that the Conservatives voted for it yesterday alongside the Liberals. In Canada, the only time the Conservatives get along with the Liberals is when there is an opportunity to undermine the environment for the benefit of oil companies. When the Liberals propose getting rid of impact assessments for pipelines, suspending the enforcement of environmental laws and sacrificing endangered species, the Conservatives vote red. Frankly, that should worry a lot of Liberals. Who in this government ran for office intending to join forces with the Conservatives against the environment?

Madam Speaker, the Liberals and the Conservatives are joining forces to bulldoze over us with Bill C-39, for the benefit of the oil companies. Fortunately, opponents are starting to mobilize. The Liberal member for West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country has spoken out against his party's bill. He is afraid that ministers will be able to unilaterally suspend environmental legislation. He understands that limiting consultations to one year amounts to setting a time limit on the involvement of indigenous peoples and civil society. Who else on the government side has the courage to say that Bill C‑39 is a pro-oil bill?

Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my colleague and friend on his excellent speech. He clearly knows his subject well. He is passionate about it. We learn a lot from him. I think he paints a clear picture of the challenges and everything that needs to be done. He was referring to the last Parliament and traced all of this back some 40 years. I would like to go back about 10 years instead. At the time, I was the Bloc Québécois finance critic. During discussions about our budget requests with then minister of finance, Bill Morneau, I asked him to address the issue of access to safe drinking water in all first nations communities across Canada. He assured me that this was in line with their priorities, and that if we were committed to it, his government would resolve the situation. When I reviewed his budget, I could see that the money was there. However, at the end of the year, when I looked at the lapsed appropriations, the money was still there; it had not been spent, and nothing had been resolved. How is it that, 10 years later, even though the government has announced the necessary funding and expressed its willingness to take action, the issue still has not been resolved?

Mr. Speaker, there is something that struck me in my colleague's speech. He said that Bill C‑37 did not take into account the work that was done on Bill C‑61 in committee, where improvements were made. My colleague gave us a lot of examples of that. Why does he think the government did not keep these improvements? Is it just complacency? Is it because the government is not doing its homework? Does my colleague believe that all the work done in committee on Bill C‑61 will have to be redone and repeated for Bill C‑37?

Madam Speaker, I too would like to wish you, my colleagues and all House employees a happy Thanksgiving and a fruitful constituency week. Naturally, I am also including the interpreters, pages, security staff and all the employees who make it possible for us to do our jobs. As members know, Bill C‑241 would create new federal administrative structures to carry out meteorological duties that are currently the responsibility of the Meteorological Service of Canada, the branch of Environment and Climate Change Canada that provides weather forecasts, warnings and data. The bill focuses on the goal of improving forecasting for droughts and floods, which are becoming more common as a result of climate change. More specifically, the purpose of the strategy proposed in the bill is to assess the need for future investment in hydrological and water resources analysis, assessment and forecasting, particularly by using supercomputers with inputs from multiple meteorological forecast models and observations. To that end, the bill seeks to create a co-operative national hydrological and water resources forecasting service and system. This proposal raises a number of questions that deserved to be studied and did get studied in committee. For one thing, we need to know why these services cannot be provided by the Department of the Environment's existing meteorological service. In other words, how would it be useful or necessary to create a new government agency operating in parallel to the Meteorological Service of Canada? If the solution for improving meteorological forecasting for droughts and floods is to free up financial resources to bring in new advanced technologies, it seems like the government could remedy the situation when it tables its budget, which it is expected to do in the first or second week of November, before the parliamentary recess. However, as we know, the current Bill C‑241 has no budgetary impact. It merely suggests that the government assess the need or relevance of making a hypothetical investment. If the problem is not a lack of resources, what legal or administrative obstacles are currently stopping the government from improving the meteorological services provided by the Meteorological Service of Canada? The preamble of Bill C-241 states that most technologically advanced countries have a national flood forecasting service. Since Quebec is an advanced country, the Government of Quebec already provides the public with weather, hydrological and hydraulic forecasts. For example, it has an app called Vigilance that provides 48-hour flood forecasts for many rivers in southern Quebec.