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Mr. Peter Julian (New Westminster—Burnaby, NDP)

May/3/23 11:19:14 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-6

Madam Speaker, we have been in the House for midnight sessions before, and I guess I understand, in cases where Conservatives are opposed to legislation, that we hear the standard Conservative refrain, which seems to be something about North Korea. Whatever legislation they do not like, turning Canada into North Korea seems to be a recurring refrain that we have heard in the past. However, I am bit perplexed about Conservatives supporting legislation but still refusing to let it come to a vote. It does not seem to make a lot of sense. I think that, given the gravity of what Canadians are facing in so many different ways, we do have a duty as members of Parliament to move legislation forward, to move it to committee. There is no doubt that legislation can be improved, but it is at committee where that normally happens, so I am a bit perplexed by the Conservative strategy. As I have said before, there are two bloc parties in the House of Commons, the Bloc Québécois and the “block everything” party, which is the Conservative Party.

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Mr. Blake Richards

May/3/23 11:20:23 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-6

Madam Speaker, I guess I could say that there are two Liberal parties in the House as well. There is the Liberal Party and then there is the NDP-Liberal party that is propping it up. If we want to talk about two parties, let us talk about that. However, in response to the member's question, I would say this. The bill claims that there are three issues being addressed. It talks about ease of doing business, regulatory flexibility and agility, and integrity of the regulatory system. I think everyone here agrees that those are worthwhile goals, but we could say that the bill, at best, is something a little better than nothing. I think it is really important to get on the record the points that I made tonight and to point out that there is so much more the government could be doing. However, when we talk about incredibly important points that would create billions of dollars in economic activity, that would create hundreds of thousands of jobs in this country, that would improve environmental outcomes, that would be better for human rights and that would be better for global security, for a member to stand up and try to claim that somehow those things are not important just shocks me.

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Ms. Lori Idlout (Nunavut, NDP)

May/3/23 11:21:44 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-6

Uqaqtittiji, I would like to challenge the Conservatives' rhetoric about red tape and the lack of red tape being removed in the bill before us. They have used a lot of words like needing tools to make regulations nimble. I would like to challenge this fictional reality with actual text that is in the bill, and I will read a tiny example of what is in the bill. It reads: It also amends the Weights and Measures Act to, among other things, enable the Minister of Industry to permit a trader to temporarily use, or have in their possession for use, in trade, any device even if the device has not been approved by the Minister or examined by an inspector. How is this a form of red tape when it is allowing measures to happen without specific devices, which are even undefined when it comes to the Weights and Measures Act?

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Mr. Blake Richards

May/3/23 11:23:08 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-6

Madam Speaker, I guess I would say that perhaps the member should ask that question of her coalition partner, the Liberal Party. It is their bill. What I was really struck with listening to the member is this: It is really sad to see what has become of the once principled NDP. At one time, New Democrats were defenders of principles. They were not necessarily principles that I shared, but I had respect for the fact that they had principles they stood up for here in the House of Commons, and now to watch them essentially be defenders of a Liberal government that they are supposed to be in opposition to is really sad and pathetic to see.

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Mr. Adam Chambers (Simcoe North, CPC)

May/3/23 11:23:50 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-6

Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise here this evening and share my thoughts on Bill S-6. Before that, however, I just want to acknowledge that I heard the intervention from the hon. colleague from New Westminster—Burnaby about the point of privilege that was raised earlier. I want to say that I welcome his comments and thoughts on that matter. It is an important issue. I will turn to Bill S-6 in a second, but I just want to say that the number one thing I hear from Canadians who happen to catch any of the proceedings on TV is that nobody answers a question, and for the life of me I cannot understand why the government cannot answer the simple question of when it found out. Bill S-6 is supposed to modernize the regulatory environment. It would make 46 minor changes to 29 acts across 12 different organizations. Apparently, this is supposed to be an annual bill. It is a little bizarre that it is coming in through the Senate, but that tells us one thing: There is actually no owner within the government's executive branch that is supposed to be in charge of red tape or regulatory reduction, because it has to farm out this work to a member of the Senate. Why is it that the government has to find an owner in the Senate? The government does not have anyone over there who is responsible for regulatory modernization. It had to find an owner who is in a different chamber. My first instinct when looking at the bill is that I am supportive of it. It seems reasonable, but we have to ask ourselves whether these are really the life-changing regulations that we should be looking to reduce for Canadians. There are other questions I have for the government. Is it going to accept amendments at committee if we have other really good ideas? We just took another senator's private member's bill and blew it up. We are going to accept a ton of other amendments to that senator's bill, so hopefully we will do that with this one. Also, the government is not even measuring how many regulations we have. There are over 4,000 regulations in the consolidated regulations of Canada, and we are going to take out 45, but we do not know how many regulations are elsewhere. There is a saying, “What gets measured gets done.” However, we do not even have a baseline, and the government, by its own admission, is thinking about bringing in over 250 regulations over the next couple of years. This year, it would take out only 45, so it seems a little bizarre to claim some great victory that is going to change the lives of Canadians. The regulations seem relatively minor. I look forward to hearing the amazing testimony at committee from officials who are going to say how this is going to revolutionize Canadian lives and make us more innovative, but I am not sure. We should not hold our breath for that. It is important to remember what the government was elected on. Its members said that better is always possible. That sounds really nice, but why does someone not say, “Why can we not make government simpler?” Why can we not make it simpler for Canadians to deal with the government? I will give a great example. The government has an idea of the underused housing tax. If someone does not use their house for their own personal reasons, they would fill out a form and prove that it is an allowable use, for which they do not have to pay this special tax. However, the form is six pages long. If they try to figure out whether they qualify for an exemption, it is confusing to even the most sophisticated accountants, and they would have to do the form every single year. If they are a farmer or a builder and they build multiple homes, it is unclear whether they would qualify for the exemption, so they would have to fill out that paperwork every year. Why does the government not just say, “Listen, if you fill out the form once, that is all you have to do until you dispose of the property”? Then it would make sense. If there is no change in control of the property, why would they have to fill out the form, the same six pages, just to say to the government that everything is the same as it was last year? This is the approach the government takes to bringing in new regulations. It was not that long ago that one could only fax documents into the CRA. In fact, my experience is that I got locked out of my CRA account just a few weeks ago. I owed documents to the CRA. I had to provide documents but since I was locked out of my account, I could not get into it. Do members know what the suggestion was? It was to fax in the documents. I asked why I could not just email them in, but was told the CRA could not accept emails. “Well, how about you print off the email and go and put it on the fax machine, like is that not a reasonable solution?” These are the kinds of things that would make Canadians' lives easier and make it better to deal with the government. Let us take another example of immigration and some of the delays in the immigration process along with some of the regulatory issues that Canadians are dealing with. There is a young woman who works as a PSW at a retirement home in Midland. This young woman is waiting for her permanent residency card. She has been waiting almost two years. Guess what? This woman is a qualified nurse but she cannot change jobs while she is waiting for her PR card. How incredibly sad is that, to know that we have a health care crisis in this country due to a lack of labour, to know we have a qualified nurse able to do that job but the government, with its policies and its bureaucracy, is preventing that from happening. It is not her fault. It is the government's fault. We are waiting too long to process applications. There is another example, and the member for Banff—Airdrie mentioned doctors earlier. There are taxi drivers who are qualified doctors in other countries. I met one of them last week. Waheed is his name. He is from Afghanistan and is an incredible human being. He is a qualified doctor. He has to wait four more years to be able to practise family medicine in Canada. His English is excellent. He seemed like a very competent individual. Surely there is a way we can get this person into the medical profession a lot sooner. Another great example of some regulations we should change has to do with Transport Canada. It cannot approve medicals quickly enough to make sure that we can get pilots approved to fly. I will give an example. Gary lives in my riding. Gary is recently retired and Gary builds his own planes. That is what he does as a hobby. All he wants to do in his retirement years is fly a couple of planes. His medical has been sitting waiting to be approved at Transport Canada for almost two years. He says, “Adam, all I want to do is fly my planes. How many years do you think I have to wait to get this approved by Transport Canada?” These are regulations that will actually change people's lives if we can speed them up. Instead, we have this list that seems like a bit of a list of low-hanging fruit from a bunch of other places. It is unclear to me what the actual impact will be of all these regulations. I hope that we will get a chance to get some evidence at committee and the government will be held accountable for how this is actually going to improve the lives of Canadians. I will give one example as I close that the government might want to take back to its own people. The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act provides that governments may allow electronic documents in place of paper documents. It is an opt-in provision for departments. I have a simple solution: departments must have a provision for electronic documents and paper documents. That would be a very simple, easy law to change that would then require each department, where they have a form, to also produce a digital version. I think there are lots of things we could do. I hope the government is open to suggestions at committee and I look forward to fielding all of its questions right now.

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Mr. Dave Epp (Chatham-Kent—Leamington, CPC)

May/3/23 11:33:46 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-6

Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague referenced early in his comments some of the commitments that the present government made when it was elected. The phrases that come to my mind are “Sunny ways” and that “Sunlight is the best disinfectant”. Could he share his opinion as to the transparency of the present government, given the issues that we are facing tonight?

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Mr. Adam Chambers

May/3/23 11:34:16 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-6

Madam Speaker, I really appreciate the opportunity provided by my hon. colleague to expand on the reasons for which the government believed it was elected in the first place. “Sunny ways” was the refrain we heard. We also heard “better is always possible”. Those things sound really great, but then eight years later, things get a little tired. It is not so sunny anymore, and there is a bit of a cloud hanging over everything. It is a little less transparent than it was, and better does not really seem to be always possible. It seems to be getting much more difficult for the government.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate), Lib.)

May/3/23 11:34:55 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-6

Madam Speaker, since he is on the topic of weighing in on the various slogans, I am wondering if he wants to comment on why he did not once say “bring it home” in his last speech. We know that is the new-found slogan of the day for Conservatives. Maybe he wants to address that.

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Mr. Adam Chambers

May/3/23 11:35:15 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-6

Madam Speaker, let us bring it home.

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Ms. Lori Idlout (Nunavut, NDP)

May/3/23 11:35:26 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-6

Uqaqtittiji, I do, to some extent, agree with some of the member's statements, especially when it comes to the lack of impacts the bill has in engaging indigenous peoples in the various pieces of legislation it would be making amendments to. I wonder if the member would agree that Bill S-6 could be improved by ensuring regulations would require that indigenous peoples are better engaged in any of these pieces of legislation.

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Mr. Adam Chambers

May/3/23 11:36:08 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-6

Madam Speaker, we should be engaging with indigenous communities on how we could better serve them. Some of them, as I understand, still use paper forms, and it is actually very difficult for them to deal with the government. Let us be also clear that all regulations are not bad regulations. It is like saying unchecked capitalism is not necessarily the best thing. If we look at the 1930s, we had the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission because of tons of fraud. We are not saying to get rid of every single regulation, we are saying to let us just be smart about it, and the suggestion from the hon. member is a very good one.

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Mrs. Stephanie Kusie (Calgary Midnapore, CPC)

May/3/23 11:36:48 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-6

Madam Speaker, I loved the personal examples my colleague provided within his speech. Over the last week, this member has asked questions about not only the CRA deadline but also the implication of still having public servants from the CRA out on strike. I would like to know if he might provide any further suggestions to the government as it considers these important negotiations with this important group at this time, as Canadians want to file their taxes and receive their returns.

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Mr. Adam Chambers

May/3/23 11:37:28 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-6

Madam Speaker, it seems rather unfair for a government to impose a penalty on somebody for filing their taxes late when they are unable to get simple questions answered by CRA. We said to extend the tax filing deadline, and it did not like that for a bunch of reasons. That is fine, but how about they just not impose penalties or waive penalties for those people who owe money but who file late because they cannot get a reasonable question answered. The government says not to worry because they can use Charlie the chatbot. Can members guess what? Charlie the chatbot just gives random generic information, and one cannot provide Charlie the chatbot with any personal information. I do not really know how Charlie is going to help replace the 35,000 workers out on strike while they are trying to reach a deal. Let us just not punish Canadians for the government's incompetence.

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Mr. Corey Tochor (Saskatoon—University, CPC)

May/3/23 11:38:33 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-6

Madam Speaker, I appreciate this opportunity to rise and speak to Bill S-6. How I came to this bill is probably like many people. We read the title: “an act respecting regulatory modernization”. It reminds me of going through Netflix when someone wants to watch something new so they look at the title and think that it kind of fits, and maybe they see the trailer or read the bio and a bit of what is going to go on in the video, and they say that it is something they can probably get behind. We have lots of regulatory issues in Canada and modernizing them is probably a good thing. We know that over these eight long years, the current Liberal government has introduced more legislation that restricts people. It restricts our ability to get the services we need from our government and it restricts our freedoms and our rights in Canada. If any bill talks about “respecting regulatory modernization”, I would be all over it. There is a list of the departments. There are 12 organizations. I am not going to read all of them, but all of these are things that we should modernize, especially on the regulatory side. We have so much red tape. It has been said that we are the most heavily red-taped country in the world, which holds back our freedoms. All this excess of regulation makes people sick and tired of dealing with government. They throw up their papers and say, “To heck with this, I am not doing this, not applying for that, not going to get into this program, not going to get this grant and not going to apply for this opportunity”, because there is no end to the red tape, the forms and the excess of regulation that Liberals are known for. It goes back to the philosophy, I believe, of the Liberals, which is that government knows best, that someone knows better than the citizens. We have seen this time after time with respect to different legislation that gets introduced here. There is this feeling that the poor citizens need the government's protection and they need the hands of the all-knowing government to reach into their lives and make them difficult. I just think it is garbage. I think of all the waste we have in government, all the duplication and all the unnecessary things that everyday, common people go through just to interact with their government. The government is supposed to help them, but in a lot of ways it hurts Canadians. It hurts Canadians' productivity. It hurts our potential to grow our country, to expand, and to create opportunities for the next generation. That is where the current government has failed miserably in some of the regulatory changes it did early on. I do question how history is going to look back at these eight long years. Hopefully they are coming to an end here soon. I think of the lost opportunity and of the regulatory change in Bill C-69. This is one bill that is terrible for our country. We have seen the results of the restrictive nature of shutting down everything. This goes from coast to coast to coast. I think of one of the largest missed opportunities for Canada. When we look back on these eight long years, what was the worst missed economic opportunity for this generation and probably the next? I think of the impact on liquefied natural gas. When the Liberals came to government, they knew better than the industry and the citizens about what we should be doing to hopefully lower our emissions and grow our economy. There were 15 liquefied natural gas plants proposed for Canada. This is not just a mom-and-pop gas station down the road; this is $10 billion to $20 billion of economic driving force in those communities, and we had 15 of them proposed. Do members know how many got built? Zero of these plants were built. They were going to be massive economic drivers, and it was all derailed because of Bill C-69 and the Liberal government. This is the regulatory framework that the Liberals put in. Their end goal was to shut down industry, and they shut it down. They shut down not only the opportunity on the coasts but also the opportunity for well-paying jobs in my province. In Saskatchewan, the drilling rates for natural gas dropped. I shudder to think of how many opportunities and powerful paycheques these families would have had if the Liberals had not brought in this regulation. It would have released so much natural gas out of Canada. That would actually have lowered emissions. The gas from those plants, for the most part, was headed to Asia and the European market. We are positioned perfectly. Canada can supply the two largest markets with liquefied natural gas. There is no other market that has the known reserves that we have in the ground, positioned in the perfect location in terms of both Europe and Asia. When we fast forward to what has happened since these plants were cancelled because of the regulatory regime, where the goalposts kept moving, we find that Asia has more coal plants. What the Liberal government does not understand is that we need energy to survive in this climate and to prosper. It is the same in other countries, where our liquefied natural gas could have offset all the tonnage of coal that Asia has been using. What a missed opportunity. We could have lowered our emissions, provided well-paying jobs for Canadians and collected royalties that could be put back into our society. This is the virtuous circle that we should be encouraging in every industry, but this is an example of the heavy-handed regulatory changes and the red tape that the Liberals have introduced and that have canned so many projects. It is a shame. I think of the missed economic opportunity. There is no larger one that I know of in the history of our country other than the government's change in the regulatory process that killed those 15 plants. That is on the environmental side. We know that natural gas is a superior source of energy over coal. It lowers emissions and provides good paycheques in Canada. Moreover, it could have saved lives in Europe; this is probably the area that I hope the members on the other side realize most. Energy security is the number one issue in Europe right now. Putin had the control of European countries for natural gas. As we know, unfortunately, what has transpired with the invasion of Ukraine has brought about a real challenge in Europe's energy security. How many lives would have been saved if we had these plants? Putin may not even have invaded Ukraine or, if he did, the war would have been that much shorter because of those countries that rely on natural gas. It is not going away. As much as there are people who would wish oil and gas away in our lifetime or on our planet, it is always going to be within our mix. I think of how much more Ukraine could have counted on its neighbours in Europe if they were not worried about Putin cutting off their natural gas. That relates exactly to Bill C-69 and why the Liberals changed the goalposts and killed this industry that was just getting on its feet. I cannot think of another regulatory change that has had as much of a negative impact on our planet, be it environmentally or for energy security, as the regulatory change on liquefied natural gas has done. I forgot to mention that I will be sharing my time. Going back to the regulatory side of things, any time one puts a break on productivity, it hurts the citizens that one is supposedly there to serve. That is wrong. It has affected my home, the Speaker's home and all our homes. We are going to bring it home.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen (Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons (Senate), Lib.)

May/3/23 11:48:36 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-6

Madam Speaker, I am curious to know how many of those liquified natural gas plants the former Conservative Harper government was able to build. Just one? More importantly, is the member sure that the future of our country is so dependent on liquified natural gas? There is no doubt that to some degree it will be used. However, what we are seeing, at least what I am seeing in my own riding, is people who are literally cutting their gas line off at the street because they are converting their heat sources to heat pumps. Heat pumps are the newest thing. They do not require natural gas. There is actually a shift, at least from a home heating perspective, away from natural gas. I am curious why Conservatives continually put so much of their political capital into fossil fuels.

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Mr. Corey Tochor

May/3/23 11:49:38 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-6

Madam Speaker, I have an urgent message for Canadians if they heard that Liberal member speak. They should not cut the gas line to their house. Winter is coming back, probably in seven months. The Liberal member thinks that people should be cutting the line to their furnace. We heard it here first, the Liberals would like people to go home and cut their natural gas furnace off. This is ridiculous. On the facts about liquified natural gas, we approved the only one that is getting built right now. It is not done yet, because the regulatory changes have slowed the process. The United States has built six since then, and they have 20 more in the books. That is jobs and paycheques that should go to Canadians, not Americans, and it is all because of these Liberals.

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Mr. Peter Julian (New Westminster—Burnaby, NDP)

May/3/23 11:50:33 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-6

Madam Speaker, the member speaks about cuts, and of course the Conservatives are absolutely great at cutting essential services for Canadians. We saw that in the dismal decade when the Harper regime was in power. We saw them slashing health care. We saw them forcing seniors to work more years before they could ever get to their pension. They slashed services for veterans. Unbelievable. Imagine, veterans who have given their lives to Canada, who laid their lives on the line, and the Conservative response was to slash all of those services that were provided to veterans. Of course, the Conservatives did not cut for everybody. They gave unbelievable amounts of money to Canada's big banks for profits. They put in place the Harper network of tax evasion countries so that we ended up losing $30 billion a year. The question I would like to ask my colleague is, what are the Conservatives going to cut this time?

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Mr. Corey Tochor

May/3/23 11:51:40 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-6

Madam Speaker, I feel sorry the member. He has been here an awfully long time, and maybe the length of time is shading some of his memories. The Harper Conservative government increased health transfers every year by 6%. What the member just shared could be viewed as incorrect, but I would not use unparliamentary language to describe the misleading statistics that he put forward because he knows that is wrong. I would like to add that the member is a coalition partner with the Liberals. The last time the Liberals were in government, before this time, they slashed the transfers to the provincial governments. In my province, what that meant was 52 rural hospitals were closed, because the Liberals cut the health transfers to Saskatchewan. It is on them as a partner in this costly coalition.

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Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)

May/3/23 11:52:37 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-6

Madam Speaker, I was just recently in Edmonton for Earth Day and toured a home that had just cut the gas line supply to the House. It was in Edmonton, where they get rather cold winters. They have an air source heat pump that was installed. They have also installed solar panels on their roof. The installer was there to talk about the current demand. They cannot keep up in Edmonton with homes that want air source heat pumps installed, because they work so well in cold climates and cut the heating bills substantially while also keeping air quality in the home safer. I just thought the hon. member would be thrilled to know that this is actually something that happens and does not spring from the imagination of the member for Kingston and the Islands.

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Mr. Corey Tochor

May/3/23 11:53:31 p.m.
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Re: Bill S-6

Madam Speaker, the member was in Edmonton last weekend. It has been a long spring, but it was not freezing. What I would put my faith in, in part, is for homeowners' ability to get insurance. Insurance would not cover the house because they know that it is an inconsistent heat source. They will not get coverage.

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