Honourable senators, I rise today to speak in support of Bill C-226, which seeks to establish a national strategy to assess, prevent and address environmental racism while advancing environmental justice in Canada.

The goal and intent of what this legislation will accomplish cannot be overstated. Environmental racism may not be a well‑known concept, but it is a profoundly damaging reality that many Canadians face with little acknowledgment or redress.

The Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources heard from a number of witnesses of varied backgrounds representing First Nations, Inuit, Black and other racialized communities. They also heard from renowned academics and legal experts. In essence, the possibilities presented by this legislation amount to a new lease on life for many of the most marginalized individuals, peoples and communities that are often tucked away in rural and remote regions across Canada.

This is an important note to highlight. Environmental racism, by virtue of it being a type of racism, impacts upon already marginalized peoples and communities. This, colleagues, is the exact segment of the population in Canada to which senators are supposed to be most responsible.

As set out explicitly in the Supreme Court of Canada’s 2014 ruling on the Senate reference:

Over time, the Senate also came to represent various groups that were under-represented in the House of Commons. It served as a forum for ethnic, gender, religious, linguistic, and Aboriginal groups that did not always have a meaningful opportunity to present their views through the popular democratic process . . . .

Colleagues, is there a better example of a bill that responds more directly to this obligation to represent the voiceless than the bill before us now? Bill C-226 seeks to offer tangible remedies to racialized Canadians who continuously struggle against the juggernaut that is the resource extractive industry.

Bill C-226 is truly a life-and-death proposition for many communities. This bill deals with premature deaths and premature morbidities — scientifically and empirically proven causality related to resource extractive activities.

This is not a frivolous or abstract bill. It has been a long time coming, and it has gone through all the necessary steps of review. Other countries around the world have already understood and adopted the concept of environmental justice, with Canada now close to catching up to those forward-thinking and just-minded societies. The opportunity is before us. After lengthy due diligence by senators, today is the time for us to vote on this opportunity.

Regrettably, a final vote has now been jeopardized because of a highly politicized process from which the bill’s sponsor, Senator McCallum, has been excluded.

Colleagues, Bill C-226 has had a long journey to where we are today — first introduced in a previous Parliament in February 2020, only to languish and die upon dissolution of that Parliament.

In February 2022, the leader of the Green Party in Parliament, MP Elizabeth May, introduced an enhanced version of the bill. It is before us after passage in the other place, without amendment.

Bill C-226 has been thoroughly reviewed by the Senate’s Energy Committee. Unanimously, without suggestion or discussion of amendment, it has returned to us.

Honourable colleagues, after ample due diligence, this bill has been closely examined. Its virtues and benefits have been well‑established to the satisfaction of a range of senators, paying close attention to their responsibility to carefully and thoughtfully examine all dimensions of a bill brought to this chamber and to committee, now returned to all of us to follow proper, established procedures.

Today, I stand before you because, in discussion with Senator McCallum — the sponsor of Bill C-226 here — I have come to share her disappointment with some of the senatorial actions that have gone on behind the scenes.

Honourable senators, please keep in mind that Senator McCallum took this on as an unaffiliated senator, without the favour of a leader, liaison or scroll representative — in other words, without the support and privileges reserved only for caucused senators.

It has been incumbent on Senator McCallum and her office to shepherd this bill through the Senate of their own volition. I hope we can agree that “Team McCallum” has done well, that our colleague Senator McCallum has sponsored this bill with grace and tenacity at every turn.

Senators, I invite you to recall that, last spring, Senator McCallum had to fight to bring Bill C-226 to a second reading vote, which was delayed for many months until October 2023. Essentially alone, she acted with tremendous patience, restraint and — as hard as it may have been — even some deference to the “wink, wink, that’s the way things work here,” which resulted in a suite of agreed-upon bills passing before Bill C-226, that is, bills that belonged to caucused senators thereby ensuring that those bills now have priority at committee. Unfortunately, it is looking like Senator McCallum may be facing similar tactics this time around, awaiting a third reading vote.

Senator McCallum disclosed to me that in April she met with and communicated with group and caucus leadership to advocate for a fairly paced third reading vote, and that a consensus was reached to include her Bill C-226 in the recent suite of C-bills originating from the other place in the leader-brokered process that saw multiple bills expedited through this chamber.

In light of Government Motion No. 167 and the current discussion around the discriminatory realities facing unaffiliated senators, this agreement for expedition was welcome, excellent news. It is not every day that unaffiliated senators are considered favourably in such high-level discussions.

But was this predictably, sadly, short-lived fairness?

I’m advised that Senator McCallum was informed yesterday evening that, due to leaders being unable to agree to the passage of a further suite of bills, Bill C-226 has been dropped and now its final vote is excluded from the deal. It was suggested that perhaps a vote could be held at some nebulous point in the fall.

Honourable senators, I thank you again for your attention to my speech this week setting out the daily discrimination experienced by unaffiliated senators under the Senate’s practice of Aristotelian equality, where those of us who are different are treated differently and unfairly.

Please allow me to reiterate and underscore a critically important point here. Unaffiliated senators do not have the same leverage or equal opportunity to advocate for our items to progress through the legislative process. We have no bargaining chips of our own. We are excluded from discussions that produce decisions. We have no representative or champion within these discussions. We are shut out and shut down.

Being advised after the fact that a previous verbal agreement to have Bill C-226 receive its final vote will now not be honoured is disheartening. The long-standing and normalized process of horse-trading bills or paring off bills is a practice that is oppositional to the tenets of modernization.

Should not bills be considered and weighed on merit through careful consideration at committee with ample opportunity for senators to speak at readings? How does it make sense that a bill lives or dies based on the timelines and favours accorded to other unrelated legislation? We have just seen some bills advance to committee without a single senator speaking at second reading, for example, Bill C-275.

Let’s be honest about the impact on bills such as Bill C-226. This favouritism, this truncated due diligence, impedes the fair, final disposition of bills such as Bill C-226 that has succeeded at every stage of comprehensive review in both houses. How can this disparate treatment be viewed as acceptable?

Honourable colleagues, I stand before you today to call upon each of us to act responsively out of respect for our own careful, thoughtful standards on legislative review. Supporting this bill respects our standards and a primary purpose of the Senate: giving vulnerable minorities from coast to coast to coast a lifeline by which they can begin to improve their lives, health and environments.

Colleagues, I urge you to support our colleague Senator McCallum. Support Bill C-226 and support the voiceless and underrepresented Canadians to whom the Senate has a particular duty of care.

In conclusion, Your Honour, I call for the question on Bill C-226. Thank you. Meegwetch.

Thank you for the question, Senator Cardozo.

I think even a quick scan of major media today answers your question. For those of you who noticed, there was more coverage about Grassy Narrows and the mercury poisoning — which we had been assured a number of times was being dealt with — and we now have a current media report on the fact that that is not true and that the Indigenous community of Grassy Narrows continues, on a daily basis, to suffer terrible health consequences. By no means are we talking about history. We are talking about the combination of history that has not stopped and is the current reality as well.