Waste Legislation : Canada: Bill C-230 to combat toxic waste proliferation in First Nation communities
A new bill that aims to address environmental racism was passed by the Canadian parliament in its second instance.
Introduced by Nova Scotia MP Lenore Zann, the piece of legislation (‘Bill C-230’) is now under scrutiny by the environment parliamentary committee before it returns to the House of Commons.
Should it pass, Canada could become one of the first countries in the world to develop a national strategy to tackle environmental racism.
The concept, defined by US civil rights leader Benjamin Chavis in 1982, refers to, amongst other things, ‘the deliberate targeting of communities of colour for toxic waste facilities, the official sanctioning of life-threatening pollutants in these communities as well as to racial discrimination when formulating environmental policy’.
In practice, this translates to the notorious Africville incident which saw a Black community in Nova Scotia subject to toxic waste dumping and then denied basic services such as sewers. The landmark 1960’s mercury pollution case in Grassy Narrows, where 90% of the Grassy Narrows First Nation community residents in Ontario suffered health impacts after a former pulp and paper mill discharged mercury into the environment, represents another example.
Industrial pollution of this sort is prevalent in racial minority communities across the US and Canada, a fact that prompted US President Joe Biden to sign an executive order in January pledging to tackle the issue, the same motivation which now drives the tabling of Bill C-230 in the Canadian House of Commons.
A 2020 report by UN Special Rapporteur Baskut Tuncak found that indigenous communities in Canada are disproportionately affected by toxic waste pollution, the human rights expert determining that Canada’s handling of toxic chemicals and industrial waste shows ‘a blatant disregard for indigenous rights’.
The government’s delay in fulfilling its 2015 pledge to end the water crisis in First communities and abolish all 126 drinking advisories, that is, officially mandated instructions to affected people advising them to boil their water or buy bottled water, is a recent example for this.
Bill C-230, with its requirements to record information and statistics relating both to the location of environmental hazards as well as the correlation of factors such as race, socio-economic status and environmental risk, is a step in the right direction.
Legislation on its own, however, can prove toothless if not enforced properly.
Both the government as well as civil society is called to prevent and redress environmental racism. The law will also need to be backed up with adequate resources and transparency to ensure that the national strategy is participatory, adequately resourced and leads to continual renewal and improvement.
Yet linked with other relevant policies such as the net-zero carbon emissions bill and the proposed amendments to the Canadian Environmental Protection act, Bill C-230 could serve to set a national precedent in combatting systemic environmental racism.