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House Hansard - 307

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 2, 2024 10:00AM
Context: House Hansard - 307 - May/2/24
Hon. Steven Guilbeault (Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Lib.)
  • May/2/24 3:15:08 p.m.
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  • Re: Bill C-69 
Mr. Speaker, as the Supreme Court asked us to do, we have brought changes to the Impact Assessment Act of Canada to ensure that the federal government will do what the federal government is supposed to be doing while provinces do their part in impact assessment, and we are confident that this will help us to move forward. I would remind my hon. colleague that at the time Bill C-69 was adopted, we did not have clean fuel standards, we did not have zero-emission vehicle standards, we did not have regulations on methane and we were not working on a cap on oil and gas emissions or clean electricity standards.
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Context: House Hansard - 307 - May/2/24
Ms. Elizabeth May (Saanich—Gulf Islands, GP)
  • May/2/24 4:14:59 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, my hon. colleague from Kings—Hants and I have never compared notes, but we went to the same law school. I am drawing on my experience as a proud graduate of the Dalhousie University school of law to say that the current government has completely bungled impact assessment and has bungled repairing the impact assessment law. He referenced it in his speech. Therefore, I want to put to him that we had extremely effective federal environmental assessment laws, starting in 1975, concretized in 1993 in a statute brought in by Brian Mulroney, and they were destroyed by Stephen Harper in the spring of 2012 in a budget implementation act. The current Liberal government promised to repair the law to what it was before 2012, and instead, it continued with Harper's approach, which is why the legislation was struck down by the Supreme Court of Canada. The designated project list approach was far too discretionary and untethered from the federal jurisdictional, clear guidance that existed under Mulroney. I would ask my hon. colleague from Kings—Hants if he could exert his influence over the people who were not trained at law school, such as the Minister of the Environment, to fix the Impact Assessment Act, but not through this quick, dirty and flawed approach in the ways and means bill.
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