ENVI Committee Report

The Liberal opposition members of the Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development wish to explain further why the Committee was unable to complete the study of Bill C-377 on ensuring that Canada assumes its responsibilities in preventing dangerous climate change.

The House of Commons referred the Bill to the Standing Committee on the Environment and Sustainable Development on 16 October 2007 and the Committee commenced consideration of the Bill on 11 December 2007. The Committee heard evidence from 25 witnesses, essentially economic, environmental and legal experts from government, private sector, academic, non-governmental and legal organizations.  The overwhelming majority of the witnesses called for urgent action by parliamentarians to drastically reduce Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions. Not only did most of the witnesses provide support for the Bill, but they also proposed solutions where specific concerns were raised about the Bill.

The Committee commenced clause by clause consideration of the Bill on 3 March 2008. The Committee made rapid progress on the amendments proposed by the New Democratic Party, the Bloc Québécois and the Liberals during the first days of clause by clause consideration. These amendments largely addressed concerns raised by the witnesses. Although the government claimed the Bill was flawed because it did not contain an economic analysis of its costs, Government members did not propose a single amendment before the deadline for the submission of amendments agreed to by all committee members. This was all the more surprising given that the government had had ample time to prepare amendments as the Bill had been submitted in the Committee six months previously, and was first presented in the House of Commons on 31 October 2006.

On 4 March 2008, Government members began filibustering in an attempt to block the passage of the Bill.  Examples of filibustering techniques included repeating arguments that the Bill would have serious economic impacts; and reading for hours, word for word, from the Government’s Turning the Corner Plan. Ironically, this plan was presented without any economic analysis despite the numerous requests by opposition members for a presentation of such an analysis. Concerned that the Bill might be filibustered until its deadline, a thirty day extension was sought by the opposition members of the Committee from the House of Commons on 5 March 2008.  In a spirit of collaboration, after opposition members graciously invited the Parliamentary Secretary to Minister of the Environment to sit on the Steering Committee, the Parliamentary Secretary agreed to a work plan on 12 March 2008 whereby this Bill would be treated expeditiously with only one further day, 13 March 2008, devoted to clause by clause. However, on the 31 March 2008, members of parliament representing the Government blocked progress yet again by filibustering, acting apparently on new instructions from the Minister of the Environment’s Office, thereby placing the Parliamentary Secretary in the embarrassing position of reneging on his promise to conclude discussion of the Bill within the agreed work plan. The continued and systematic filibustering by the Government on 7, 9 and 14 April 2008 for a total of over twenty hours eventually led the Committee to an impasse.

Accordingly, the Committee adopted a motion at its meeting of 17 April 2008 to report the Bill back to the House of Commons in the hope that the remaining amendments which were blocked from being introduced at Committee stage could be introduced at Report stage. This would allow the agreed-upon amendments to go on to the House of Commons for a vote while the outstanding ones could be debated in the House of Commons if Speaker Peter Milliken allows it.