44th Parl. 1st Sess.
November 2, 2023 10:00AM
Mr. Speaker, this bill is multi-faceted. Unfortunately, it is rigid and highly technical and urgently needs a number of amendments. It encompasses commercial interests, logistical issues, economic considerations and, for good measure, regional development and the vitality of rural and remote communities.
We are living in the 21st century. Our lives are not what they were in the last century. These days, everything has to move quickly. Access to bandwidth, commonly known as a network, is a necessity. Millions of people started teleworking during the pandemic, which shows that work habits are changing, and reliable, secure Internet access is a must.
In November 2018, the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development launched a consultation to determine whether creating a fifth tier was necessary, given spectrum saturation and the introduction of new technologies like 5G. Tier 5 is the very local spectrum, the smallest service areas. After several meetings, the Department of Innovation, Science and Economic Development concluded that it was indeed necessary to create these areas. By subdividing further, it became possible to improve broadcast coverage in rural and remote areas, providing coverage that tier 5 could not. That is where things stand right now.
Experts found that the least densely populated areas lacked adequate coverage and that telecommunications giants were buying usage rights to spectrum that they were not necessarily actively using. Experts explained that telecommunications giants chose to do nothing with this bandwidth. They turned it into a product for financial speculation so that they could resell the usage rights for much higher prices than the initial auction price. That is capitalism 101.
Currently, telecommunications companies can acquire spectrum licences at auctions organized by the federal government, but they are not required to use them in their entirety. This situation is problematic for remote, rural areas where a company can hold a licence for a certain range of frequencies, but because it is not considered economically viable, it remains unused and inaccessible to the public.
The wording in Bill S-242 is very rigid, as I said earlier. A major problem is that there are no provisions that would provide an incentive for the industry to invest. More specifically, there is nothing in the bill to require any consultation with the industry that could lead to the development of a strategy that would benefit all parties involved.
What is needed is a formula that shares the investment risk. Of course, absolutely no one is against connecting people in remote areas or who are underserved, but at the same time, it is critically important to ask questions and call things as they are. Is any reasonable person going to put up a $1-million tower and provide expensive annual maintenance and upgrades in a place that can only be accessed by air? We will have to talk about the importance of public service.
The answer to that question may be obvious, but I would say that, in this particular case, it is not quite that obvious, and there could be loopholes. If the bill goes to committee, the Bloc believes it will need extensive amendment and stakeholders will have to testify so lawmakers can come up with an effective public policy. In its current form, this piece of legislation is not the right way to achieve those goals.
The bill does not take into account the interests of co-operatives and businesses or provincial and territorial efforts to connect the most remote communities. If the federal government wants to move forward, the risk has to be shared. No private company, no matter how big, is going to invest in sparsely populated areas where the investment and the operating costs eclipse any possibility of realizing a marginal profit.
Presumably areas of commercial interest, those likely to produce a profit, are already covered by companies or co-operatives. The reason some regions are poorly served or not connected is that existing policies offer companies no incentive to fill those gaps. That said, all telecom observers and experts agree that more competition in this key economic sector is absolutely necessary.
The telecommunications share of Canada's GDP is constantly growing. The government's shift to digital in areas such as health records, distance learning, income tax returns, car registrations—we know a thing or two about that in Quebec—is making Internet access even more critical. Then there are the numerous businesses that are transforming their operations by migrating to the Internet. Not being connected in 2023 leaves people vulnerable and excluded from new ways of interacting with the government. I would even go so far as to say that it excludes them from society.
Ottawa promised 98% high-speed Internet connectivity by 2026 and 100% by 2030. Comparing data from CPAC, or the Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada, and the CRTC, one quickly realizes that Canadians will have to perform a major national blitz to achieve this ambitious goal.
Quebec, however, grabbed the bull by the horns in 2021. That year, the Quebec government launched its Opération haute vitesse, or operation high speed, which was spearheaded by the province's high-speed Internet and special connectivity projects secretariat. The aim is to provide coverage to the 250,000 Quebec households that, despite private initiatives by providers and financial incentives from government programs, do not have access to adequate coverage in their region.
It is Quebec's department of energy and natural resources that has the mandate to track the progress of the rollout of telecommunications services. There is no doubt that this initiative has accelerated the rollout of services, a problem that has gone on for far too long for many Quebeckers. My colleague from Laurentides—Labelle talked about that and said that it has been her cause since 2019.
In the context of the Government of Quebec's operation high speed, the preferred technology for making internet services accessible was fibre optics. However, there are all kinds of other technologies that can be used to connect every home: the coaxial cable, fixed wireless and the low Earth orbit satellite. Several technologies can be used.
Let us come back to Bill S‑242, which we are describing as very imperfect. It is not normal for countless communities to be so underserved or, worse yet, have no telecommunications service at all. Contrary to what people living in cities might believe, this does not only happen north of the 56th parallel. Again, my colleague from Laurentides—Labelle said it best. It is more important for federal and provincial laws to be complementary and not in competition than it is to think about strengthening the powers of the CRTC, which is what Bill S‑242 does.
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- Nov/2/23 6:39:56 p.m.
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The hon. member for Bay of Quinte with his right of reply.
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Mr. Speaker, I want to again thank Senator Patterson for bringing this bill forward. I think he did the work he needed to do in the Senate. It has been very enjoyable to debate this bill and hear the responses from all members of Parliament.
Canadians understand that they pay some of the highest cell phone bills in the world, but some are surprised that they pay the highest cell phone rates and some of the highest Internet rates in the world. Rogers, Telus and Bell are numbers one, two and three of the priciest telecommunications carriers in 48 countries out of the whole planet. Canadians already know that they pay this.
However, the bill coming out of the Senate was to do one thing and one thing only: it was to tackle spectrum speculation, such as companies buying spectrum at auctions and then making money on that. The two examples we used were, first, Rogers, which had bought, in 2013, a bunch of spectrum, and only five years later it made a $189.5-million profit. It held that spectrum, and when the spectrum became valuable, it sold it. The second was Quebecor and Videotron. In 2008, it bought $96.4-million worth of spectrum and sold it for an $87.8-million profit just nine years later. This bill was only meant to look at spectrum speculation and to ensure that we tackle that.
The current spectrum rules say that a company who buys and keeps spectrum can hold it for 20 years and has to serve a population model only after 20 years. The new rules under this bill maintain that, after three years, a company would have to hit a 50% geographical area, meaning that it cannot just look at population. A lot of these providers are looking only at the city of Toronto and not hitting the northern portions of it, or to the riding of the member for Milton, who spoke earlier. They are looking at the denser populations but not outside of those.
What is most important about this bill, which normally I am against, is that it would give the minister a new power to decide what is best for a community, which means that the minister could decide if the auction was bought and was only speculative. The minister could then change that auction and ensure that it went to someone else. However, if a provider was attempting to develop an area that it was purposed for, then the minister could extend that auction and make sure that the area gets through by that auction. That is what this bill is all about: giving the minister more power to stop spectrum speculation.
What is the point of this? Well, some members have talked about that 60% of rural Canada, where seven million Canadians live, that is not being serviced by high-speech Internet, and when they are, they are served by American companies, such as Starlink and Xplore, which are both American owned and controlled. However, when we look at Canadian companies serving Canadian markets, especially in the north and rural Canada, this bill was to ensure that we have companies that do that.
Members talked about this does not quite do what they do, which is spectrum auction reform, meaning that we are going to look at the $9 billion that Canada makes that goes into general revenues and ensure that perhaps some of that needs to go back to rural Canada to connect the north and connect rural municipalities. We have 3,500 municipalities in Canada and only 94 of them are urban, which means that over 3,400 municipalities in Canada are rural. It would be best for all of us as MPs to look at rural strategies to look at this.
Most importantly, let us get rid of this spectrum speculation. This whole premise is an anomaly and it was a flaw in the original bill of spectrum auctions, which allowed companies to make money simply because they bought an asset that is publicly owned, a public resource. Spectrum is for all Canadians. When we look at this bill, and I think it is a good one coming from the Senate, it would ensure that we tackle that flaw in this bill and ensure that we then look at the future.
In the future, yes, we need more competition in Internet. We need more competition for cell phones. We do not just need a fourth carrier, we need 40 carriers to ensure that we look after Canadians' Internet needs and that all Canadians are connected to the Internet. We need it for health, for safety, and for employment, and we certainly need it for the prosperity of this great nation.
I am thankful for this opportunity. This is a great bill, and I hope everyone can support it.
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- Nov/2/23 6:44:29 p.m.
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The question is on the motion.
If a member participating in person wishes that the motion be carried or carried on division, or if a member of a recognized party participating in person wishes to request a recorded division, I would invite them to rise and indicate it to the Chair.
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- Nov/2/23 6:45:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, we request a recorded division.
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Pursuant to Standing Order 93, the division stands deferred until Wednesday, November 8, at the expiry of the time provided for Oral Questions.
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- Nov/2/23 6:46:51 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise in this evening's adjournment proceedings. I am pleased to be able to rise to pursue a question I originally asked on June 7 of this year.
It was in question period and I had the honour to address my question directly to the Right Hon. Prime Minister. We could actually feel the smoke in Parliament that day. I do not know how many of my colleagues remember that, but on June 7, the forest fires across Canada had reached the inside of Parliament. As I said in my question, the Ottawa bubble had been pierced by the reality of the climate crisis. We felt it in the chamber. There was smoke in our eyes. Our eyes were burning and it brought home forcibly that we are in a climate emergency.
My questions to the Prime Minister were directly about what a government would do if it understood that it was an emergency. I know the Liberals continually claim that they have done more for climate than any previous government. That is possibly true. Certainly, the climate plan put forward under the government was never as complete or as effective as it could have been if Paul Martin's government had not been brought down on November 28, 2005. Money was in place in the 2005 budget and the plans were stronger and more comprehensive.
However, here we are and it is 2023. Time is literally running out. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has told us clearly that in order to hold to 1.5ºC global average temperature increase, which is not a political goal but a goal required by physics and chemistry to ensure a livable climate for our kids, global greenhouse gas emissions must peak and begin to drop rapidly by 2025.
That is why António Guterres, Secretary-General of the United Nations, has said that continued investments in fossil fuels and fossil fuel infrastructure is “economic and moral madness”.
We started talking about the forest fires this year. All around the world, scientists have tracked Canada with alarm. We had a fire season that started earlier and lasted later. In total, it burned approximately 19 million hectares. We also had floods that took lives in Nova Scotia. We also had fires that extended as far as evacuating all of Yellowknife. Both in total area affected and in the number of people affected and lives disrupted, nothing should have said so clearly to the Liberals as this forest fire season that it is not enough to put in place policies on one hand to reduce greenhouse gases, if we keep subsidizing fossil fuels with the other hand.
Now is the time to bring in an excess profits tax on the fossil fuel industry, which is bringing in $4.2 billion as Motion No. 92 would have it. Now is the time to cancel the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion before wasting a single additional dollar of public money. Now is the time to say that if we are serious about reconciliation, we do not drive that pipeline through Stk’emlupsemc te Secwepemc Territory. Now is the time to understand this is an emergency and we act like it.
From now on, we take it so seriously that building fossil fuel infrastructure and expanding fossil fuel production will stop, and stop now.
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- Nov/2/23 6:50:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is nice to see my friend and colleague from Saanich—Gulf Islands on the screen, but it would be nicer to see her in the House. I hope she is feeling better soon and will be able to rejoin us, because I know she loves it here and does such great work.
It is extremely refreshing, after a couple of days in the House of arguing about whether climate change is real with the Conservative Party, and great to get a push in the opposite direction. I say this with all sincerity. Would it not be great if what we debated in this House of Commons was how to fight climate change and not whether to fight it?
In the last couple of years, the member for Carleton took over the reins of the Conservative Party; when it ditched Erin O'Toole, it ditched all progressive values and the word “climate change” from its vernacular, despite having run on a promise to price carbon. Conservatives deny that now. They say they never said that and that they do not believe in climate change. Today, when we were having a debate about carbon pricing, I heard some things from the other side that I prefer not to repeat and will keep off the record. Their climate change denialist rhetoric is not worthy of debate in this House.
I would like to thank the member for her questions, for her strong work and advocacy on climate action and for mentioning the climate emergency over and over in this House, because it needs repeating. We are not just in a climate emergency in Canada, but around the world. I can assure the House that the Government of Canada is taking this very seriously. As the member said, our government is the Canadian government that has done the most to advance our country on climate action.
It is also important to share some facts about the global energy future that we are advancing toward. The International Energy Agency projects that, by 2030, almost half of the world's electricity supply will come from renewables, and 80% of new electricity capacity from now until 2030 will be renewable. That is great news: Canada's electricity grid is already 80% renewable. Despite efforts from Danielle Smith, the Premier of Alberta, to put a moratorium on all new renewable energy projects, we will continue on that path.
In addition to all that, 50% of all new U.S. car registrations will be electric. Heat pumps and other electric heating systems will outsell fossil fuel boilers. We will continue to work in that direction; in order to ensure that Canada is able to seize the economic opportunity in front of us and stave off the climate emergency, we have invested in job-creating measures, such as renewable power development. In budget 2023, we announced a wave of strategic investments to continue our work to catalyze job creation and to attract international investors.
Let me provide a couple of examples of that progress.
In Nova Scotia, EverWind Fuels recently received approval from our government to build North America's first facility to produce hydrogen from renewables.
In Ontario, Volkswagen, Umicore, Stellantis, Marathon Palladium and others have decided to invest in our battery ecosystem, and we are supporting those investments.
These are great examples of getting projects built, whether by responsibly developing critical minerals in a manner that unlocks economic opportunities for rural and indigenous communities or by helping the next generation of steel and auto workers build the electric cars, buses and trucks that the world needs to displace fossil fuel vehicles.
I will highlight MTB in Milton, a truck company that is doing Canada's first ever diesel-to-electric city bus conversion. I am very proud of that.
Out west, we see big things happening in Saskatchewan. We are seeing BHP construct the largest potash mines in the world, to have among the lowest emissions. Cowessess First Nation has built one of the largest wind farms in the country. Sadly, Premier Smith's moratorium on renewable energy approvals is ongoing, but this has not stopped Alberta's renewable energy industry from pushing forward, and it will continue to do so.
I will be back in a moment with a soft rebuttal to my hon. friend and colleague.
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- Nov/2/23 6:55:05 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I agree with my colleague that we need to have a sensible discussion in this place. The climate emergency is not going away; it is galloping on and threatening lives.
When we talk about affordability, we need to recognize that climate emergency events make life less affordable for everyone. In fact, they threaten our very lives, livelihoods and communities. We need to take the climate crisis far more seriously than we do. This means that the Liberals cannot continue to do one thing for climate and another for fossil fuels at the same time, all the time, and think that amounts to climate leadership. It does not.
We need to cancel the Trans Mountain pipeline. We are building it with public money. We are violating indigenous rights while building it. If it is finished and starts shipping diluted bitumen out in tankers in larger numbers, it is not a question of if but when there will be a major spill, despoiling the Salish Sea in ways that can never be cleaned up.
Please, for the love of God, we must take this seriously.
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- Nov/2/23 6:56:22 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I will just reiterate what a refreshing debate this has been to participate in.
I sincerely wish we could be having conversations in this House about how to fight climate change, not about whether to fight climate change, as with the Conservatives. Climate change is an existential threat. We are in an emergency, and the debate from the Conservatives over whether we should do the bare minimum is beyond the pale.
Fighting climate change is about creating good, sustainable jobs for generations to come and is not beyond our government, but it is so disappointing to see the Conservative Party of Canada filibustering the sustainable jobs act. Earlier today, the Canadian Labour Congress, which represents three million workers, called on Conservatives to end that debate. The Conservatives are also against Bill C-49.
It is astonishing what we have to tolerate in this House with respect to the level of debate when it comes to climate change. I once again thank my friend and colleague for her extraordinary leadership on this. I appreciate everything she does. I hope we can debate and have a conversation in person sometime very soon.
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- Nov/2/23 6:57:57 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, today I rise in the House to ask a question I asked in this House just last week about the Impact Assessment Act and the Supreme Court's ruling that overturned the federal government's move on the Impact Assessment Act, Bill C-69. The government moved ahead despite everybody it could possibly consult with, including opposition parties, every provincial legislature, 100 first nation bands across Canada and many other parties, saying the Impact Assessment Act as written was unconstitutional and treaded on their rights. So many rights are expressed in legislation, yet this was ignored for so long.
The Government of Alberta was backed by nine provincial governments at various points in time throughout the process. It took four years because the reference case took two years to go through the appeal court system and then almost another two years to get to the Supreme Court of Canada. It was four years of lost economic activity and, effectively, constitutional strife in Canada. That is a long time.
How many projects were held up in Canada in that time? It was hundreds of billions of dollars in projects. Right now, 42 projects have not received an environmental assessment. About half of them are under the old regime, the one before the Impact Assessment Act, called the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, which was passed by the previous government and effectively allowed a whole bunch of environmental assessments to be done.
What amazed me was the response I got from the parliamentary secretary for housing when I asked a question about the federal government's involvement in this. He said at that point in time that the previous government's legislation got nothing done and had a gutted process. We cannot have it both ways. I cannot say how many times I hear from the other side of the House that they have their cake and eat it too and that the old legislation they tried to fix did not get anything done and yet was gutless. We cannot have both those things at the same time, but that is the continued narrative I hear on this all the time. It bewilders me to some degree, because it contradicts itself in so many ways, but he said that.
This was supposed to deal with the fact that the Impact Assessment Act had to go back and get corrected as quickly as possible. Getting it corrected as quickly as possible would bring forward economic activity in Canada so we can get something done in this country again, including in all the provinces across Canada. This has to happen.
I think about all the economic activity that has been held up because of the uncertainty created by the Impact Assessment Act and how it has affected so many project proponents across Canada. It is an embarrassment. It is an international embarrassment too that so much capital, including Canadian investments, is being deployed elsewhere and not here in Canada. That includes the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. This is a travesty. We need to get over it as quickly as possible.
How do we do that? We could put forward legislation that is constitutional very quickly; stop sitting on our hands; take some lessons from some environmental advocates, environmental experts and constitutional experts; and listen to what they are saying: Stay in our lane, abide by our jurisdiction and get some proper legislation we can abide by in this country.
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- Nov/2/23 7:02:03 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to start by reminding the hon. member for Calgary Centre that the Supreme Court of Canada's opinion on the constitutionality of the Impact Assessment Act confirmed that there is no doubt that Parliament can enact impact assessment legislation, so this government will stay in its lane and continue the 50-year-long tradition of assessments to support the environment and the economy, while respecting the boundaries clarified in the Supreme Court's opinion.
I would also remind my hon. colleague that the Impact Assessment Act was necessary to fix the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act of 2012, which created uncertainty in timelines and lacked accountability. Canadians were calling for greater transparency, trust and confidence in the environmental assessment process after the introduction of CEAA 2012, a need which the current government responded to with the Impact Assessment Act.
I have some local context to this. There is a local project that was assessed under the Environmental Assessment Act, and it had a tragic outcome, I will say. The Impact Assessment Act sought to create a better set of rules that respect the environment and indigenous rights, and that ensures that projects are assessed in a timely way. In fact, the government recently approved the Cedar LNG project under the Impact Assessment Act, working closely with the Government of British Columbia. Colleagues will not hear that from the member for Calgary Centre or any Conservative who continually says that the current government never gets anything done, which is false. We are approving sustainable and renewable projects that respect environmental considerations all the time.
For this assessment in particular, the federal government relied on the provincial assessment process, meeting the goal of “one project, one assessment”. Final decisions have been made in seven other projects in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec after a thorough and public planning phase, that no further impact assessment was required, allowing those projects to proceed.
Attracting investment and supporting the major job-creating projects of a cleaner, 21st-century economy requires regulatory certainty from the Government of Canada, and we will continue to deliver that. That is why the government is working quickly to introduce targeted and meaningful amendments to the act that would align with the opinion of the court. In the interim, we are providing guidance to businesses, provinces, indigenous groups and stakeholders to ensure that projects currently in the assessment process have an orderly and clear path forward. To this end, we have introduced a statement on the interim administration of the Impact Assessment Act. The guidance in that statement provides clarity and continuity for proposed projects in the system or entering the system, until amendments are brought into force.
Protecting the environment while growing a sustainable economy, in line with international commitments for net-zero emissions, requires robust environmental legislation, something the previous Harper government was incapable of producing. As work is undertaken to amend the Impact Assessment Act, the principles to protect the environment, respect indigenous rights and maintain public confidence in the process will remain ever central to the impact assessment process.
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- Nov/2/23 7:05:09 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I appreciate my colleague's input on the matter, although, again, he is picking and choosing where he gets to take his facts on this.
Think about the greenhouse gas pricing act that happened at the Supreme Court just two years ago. In fact, at that point in time, the government did not consider that reference an opinion; it took it as if it were actually the law of the land. Now, the government is saying that it was just the opinion of the Supreme Court of Canada, that it will work with it, and that it accepts that as confirmation, of course, that the federal government has the right to work in this realm. That is exactly what it said. However, the federal government can do that only in its lane. Effectively, 11 sections of the bill, out of 168 sections, are where the government actually has a lane. The Supreme Court does want the federal government to go back and refine that. That is what the government seems to be ignoring at this point in time.
The best thing to do is to be surgical about this, amputate most of the bill, as people say, and go forward with making things capable of being built in Canada so we have an economy in this country again.
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- Nov/2/23 7:06:14 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the Supreme Court of Canada's opinion on the constitutionality of the Impact Assessment Act upheld the federal government's role in enacting federal environmental assessment legislation, while clarifying federal jurisdiction. The government will carefully and quickly work to introduce targeted and meaningful amendments that are in line with the court's opinion, while continuing existing work to respond to budget 2023 commitments to improve regulatory efficiency.
There is one thing that people watching back home can be sure of: this government is focused on a balance, not just casting a quick “yes” over to any organization, agency or company that wants to explore an energy project. That is really important because the environment matters to the government, and it matters to most Canadians as well. The result of that process will be an improved one for assessing major projects which protects both the environment and the economy. In the meantime, the government will provide guidance to our many stakeholders and indigenous partners to ensure as much clarity as possible for projects currently in the system, as well as for those ready to enter it.
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- Nov/2/23 7:07:15 p.m.
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The hon. member for Brantford—Brant not being present to raise the matter for which adjournment notice has been given, the notice is deemed withdrawn.
The motion that the House do now adjourn is deemed to have been adopted. Accordingly, the House stands adjourned until tomorrow at 10 a.m., pursuant to Standing Order 24(1).
(The House adjourned at 7:07 p.m.)
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