Madam Speaker, I want to start by saluting my colleague, the soon-to-be-retired member for Edmonton Strathcona, for her diligence and perseverance in bringing this bill forward over 11 years. This is perhaps the fourth time.

Of course, the Liberal government has had four years to study this bill, and here we are in the waning hours of this Parliament, which is very regrettable. If we are honest with each other, I think the chances of this bill being enacted are slim to none. However, that does not mean that it is not an essential, thoughtful piece of work. It is like a judgment that is in dissent in a court, and eventually, over time, that dissenting opinion becomes the law of the land, which is what I hope happens in this context.

This bill is not radical. The Province of Quebec has had section 46.1 of its Charter of Human Rights and Freedoms for years, which says, “Every person has a right to live in a healthful environment in which biodiversity is preserved, to the extent and according to the standards provided by law.” That is what Quebec did. For many years, Ontario had a bill as well, the Environmental Bill of Rights. Unfortunately, over the last few months, the new government of Premier Ford has gutted that bill, to the eternal shame of that government.

However, that does not mean we at the federal level cannot get it right at last. In fact, a number of people wrote in a book called International Law and the Environment as follows: “The emergence of individual environmental rights marks perhaps the most significant shift in the focus of international environmental law.” My colleague's bill would do just that.

I want Canadians to understand that this is not one of those feel-good bills with one sentence celebrating the heritage of one ethnic community that takes two sections to enact. This is a thoughtful bill, with 37 sections, 16 pages long. It was very thoughtfully changed in each Parliament to its status today, which is a fully thought-out bill that would do what other jurisdictions around the world have done.

Nor is this a new idea. I remember, back in the 1980s, writing a chapter in a book edited by the well-known environmental law scholar John Swaigen that talked about just this, and many of the principles in this bill were in fact discussed at great length in that book back in the 1980s. I salute my colleague for this excellent work.

The bill before us would create a number of specific rights, including my favourite, the right of access to environmental information in a reasonable, timely and affordable manner. As someone who has spent his career working on access to information, members can only imagine how happy I am to see that here.

However, I can tell members of the great disappointment of every single person who studied the Liberals' Bill C-58, that astounding reaction to the current Prime Minister's commitment to transparency. Every single commentator who has looked at that bill currently before Parliament has concluded that it is a travesty. It would take us backward, not forward. In fact, it is so ironic that the current Prime Minister, when in opposition, put forward a bill that would amend the Parliament of Canada Act and the Access to Information Act to provide greater transparency, but that bill goes in the exact opposite direction.

Other key things in Bill C-438 are things such as a public trust doctrine, which has been used so effectively in the United States of America to preserve lands, such as in a parks context and so forth. Another is an ability for individual Canadians to get an investigation of environmental offences. It is a thoughtful amendment to the Federal Courts Act that would allow standing for environmental groups, if there is a serious issue at stake and they have a genuine interest, to basically get rid of all the obstacles that have been put in the way of individual citizens wanting to judicially review decisions they think are wrong in the environmental context. There is also whistle-blower protection. These are just some of the key ideas that are put out in clause 4 of the bill.

However, there is so much more in this bill that needs to be saluted and praised. There are five paramount principles of environmental law that are listed. I do not have time to go over them all, but they are the precautionary principle, the polluter pays principle, the principle of sustainable development, the principle of intergenerational equity and the principle of environmental justice. These are not just words; these are principles that would apply in the implementation of the bill.

As I said earlier, Quebec has had a very vigorous commitment to environmental justice, codified in its human rights legislation and in its charter of rights and freedoms. That is how important environmentalism and sustainability Quebec talks of biodiversity are in that context.

Ontario, for many years, has had an environmental bill of rights, which has also been vigorous in its application. Unfortunately, it has met its fate. The environmental commissioner created under that statute is no longer funded by the Ford government, therefore bringing to an end a very positive experience that the jurisdiction has had with legislation not unlike what my colleague has brought forward today.

In the interests of time, I want to summarize. This initiative could have been acted on if the government were serious about environmental justice. Parliament has had this legislation before it for 11 years, four years with the current government. Here we are at the very last moment. It truly is tragic, certainly regrettable that we are unable to see this forward. The government says that it will send it to committee. That means absolutely nothing.

With two weeks left of Parliament, Canadians need to be reminded that it is a complicated bill, thoughtful bill. It would need to go through committee. It would have to go to the Senate and the like. Frankly, it is too little too late.

If the government were truly committed to environmental justice, to the of principles of which I talked, to the very specific things that would make it easier for individual Canadians to be empowered to achieve environmental justice, it would have done something with this. However, it has not and here we are.

Murray Rankin