SoVote

Context: House Hansard - 314 - May/21/24

May/21/24 7:13:33 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, that is a very important question, one we discuss regularly at the Standing Committee on Agriculture and Agri-Food. One of the things we have looked at is food prices. A bottle of Pepsi costs quite a bit more in northern Quebec than it does in Montreal. I am inclined to use unparliamentary language here, because allowing that kind of thing to happen makes no sense. Government members tell me they are going to do great things. I do not want to be mean to my esteemed colleague, but I cannot sugarcoat this: Some indigenous communities still do not have access to clean drinking water even though this is 2024. I am in favour of investment programs for indigenous communities. I am also in favour of giving them more autonomy. Maybe greenhouses can even be set up in northern Quebec and northern Canada, but can we start with the basics and make sure people have access to safe drinking water? That promise from 2015 still has not been kept.

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Mr. Alexandre Boulerice (Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, NDP)

May/21/24 7:14:37 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I know that my colleague and I have different visions for dental care. We in the NDP pushed for a dental care program that is in fact a bill paying program. An individual can go to the dentist and then get reimbursed 80% of the bill directly from the federal government. There are no federal dentists. There are no federal dental clinics either. This program allows four million Quebeckers who do not have dental coverage to gain access to care they did not have before because dental care costs too much. I am sure that people in my colleague's riding have already benefited from the program. Seniors have already been able to sign up for it this year. Does my colleague know anyone who was able to get reimbursed for dental care and who is pleased with this new program?

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Mr. Yves Perron

May/21/24 7:15:22 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is interesting that my colleague brings this up because I do indeed know people who signed up. I also received phone calls from people who told me that their dentist did not want to participate in this program because it was a botched program that the federal government implemented when it has no business in this sector. In fact, I have the same concern as my colleague. He says that we do not share the same vision. Essentially, however, our vision is the same. When I first came here as a parliamentarian, my biggest disappointment was the realization that I was not disagreeing with members of the NDP more often. Unfortunately, the NDP believes that the provinces should always be bypassed. Quebec already had a dental care plan. It was limited and far from perfect, I agree, but it was public. Now the program is being administered by private insurance companies. Once again there will be bribes paid through some kind of middleman. We know what will happen. In the end, the money will be spent and people will receive fewer services than if provincial jurisdictions had been respected. The government could have transferred the same amount of money to the Government of Quebec to have it deliver dental care under a public plan.

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Quebec

Mr. Sébastien Lemire (Abitibi—Témiscamingue, BQ)

May/21/24 7:16:38 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I heard my colleague talk about the “Agri” programs and the fact that the money was not ending up in farmers' pockets. Last year was a catastrophe, especially in Abitibi West. Because of the winter we had and the lack of snow, there was less water but also less protection and insulation for crops. I am very concerned about this situation. If the program did not work last year and there is nothing in the budget for next year, what does that mean for the future of agriculture in Abitibi-Témiscamingue?

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Mr. Yves Perron

May/21/24 7:17:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for his passion—his regional passion, I want to say. What is going to happen? It is simple. Some producers have already stepped away from producing this year. My colleague told me about Abitibi. I can tell him about the south and market gardeners. Producers are pulling out. Why are they doing that? They are stepping away to do something else, because they keep losing money year after year and they are not complete suckers. Everyone tells them they how great they are, but they are taken for granted. They eventually end up thinking that someone else will come along at some point to provide the food people need. The day when we import most of our food from outside the country and go through another crisis like COVID-19 is the day people will realize they should have done something. I do not want to sound like I am fearmongering, but that is the reality. There will be panic, and people will wonder how we could have a food shortage in our country. We must respect our people and ensure our food resiliency.

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Mr. Mike Morrice (Kitchener Centre, GP)

May/21/24 7:18:13 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise to speak to the budget and Bill C-69, as well, which implements some of its measures. When I think about folks in my community, the long and short of it, in my view, is that this budget just does not meet the moment that we are in. If anything, it just seems to be a similar story again where the government over-promises and under-delivers or, in some cases, breaks promises altogether. I would like to start with a couple of items that I appreciate and that will help folks in my community. First, it is important to point out that there are good measures in the implementation bill. One example is that there is a provision included to deny income tax deductions for non-compliant short-term rentals. It was first announced in the fall economic statement. It is a really important measure to move ahead with as we look to address the housing crisis and remove various incentives that are in place for those who are actually removing rental units from the housing market. Second, for parents who are mourning the loss of a child, there is a provision in the bill that will extend the Canada child benefit for six months after a child's death. This is the least that the federal government can do to support parents in such a difficult, unimaginable time. On the whole, though, when taking a step back to look at the budget and Bill C-69, I am concerned that it just does not follow through on the big promises that the government made. First, there is the promise about the Canada disability benefit. The promise made in 2021 in the Liberal platform was that “this new benefit will reduce poverty among persons with disabilities in the same manner as the Guaranteed Income Supplement and the Canada Child Benefit.” Those are both programs in the tens of billions of dollars a year. Instead, what is proposed in the budget is nothing that the disability community has called for and not what the government had promised. The maximum amount being proposed, $200 a month, is far too little to actually reduce levels of poverty among folks with disabilities. I will point out that 40% of people living in poverty across the country are people with disabilities. I have since asked at committee for the minister to table a list of people with disabilities who would be lifted out of poverty as a result of what is proposed in the budget. I have yet to get that list. I am also still waiting for a list of people with disabilities who asked for what was proposed in the budget. We were told that it would take three years to wait for consultations from the disability community. I am waiting for a list of people with disabilities and organizations that serve people with disabilities who asked for this $200 a month and asked for the Canada disability benefit to be delivered through the disability tax credit. Second, this is an incredibly burdensome tax credit to apply for and receive. That flies in the face of the requirement in section 11(f) of the Canada Disability Benefit Act, which is an amendment that I was successful in securing; it requires the benefit to be barrier-free. It remains my concern that what is being proposed in budget 2024 actually contravenes the Canada Disability Benefit Act, because the delivery of the Canada disability benefit is required to be barrier-free. However, the disability tax credit has an incredibly burdensome application process. Third, the benefit itself is not even proposed to start until July 2025, leaving people with disabilities at the exact same level of poverty as they are in right now. As of that point, they will get an extra six dollars a day or so. As Krista Carr at Inclusion Canada put it, “Our disappointment cannot be overstated.... This benefit was supposed to lift persons with disabilities out of poverty, not merely make them marginally less poor than they already are.” Another promise the government made in this budget was for tax fairness. The simplest place to start, if we are going to talk about tax fairness, would be an excess profit tax on the largest oil and gas companies in the country. In 2022, the top five biggest companies in Canada made $38 billion in profits after they paid shareholders $29 billion in increased dividends and share repurchases. The government already introduced, in the pandemic, an excess profit tax on banks and life insurance companies. It called it the Canada recovery dividend. I proposed in Motion No. 92 for the government to do the same thing and apply it to oil and gas companies. It has been advocated for by groups like Environmental Defence, the David Suzuki Foundation, Climate Action Network Canada and Canadians for Tax Fairness because it is a reasonable measure. With a one-time tax on profits, even just 15% of those profits over a billion dollars, it would generate $4.2 billion that could be used to help Canadians with day-to-day life, to help incentivize more public transit, reduced fares and increased service. It could help with incentives for home energy retrofits as folks in Ontario and my community continue to wait for the new version of the greener homes grant program, for example. What did we get in this budget? We got whispers that it was in the budget a few weeks before it came out, but the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers had 30 meetings with the federal government in the three months before the budget came out and Pathways Alliance had another 23 meetings in the months before the budget came out. I guess their lobbying blitz was successful, for them at least, for their corporate greed, while the windfall profit tax is nowhere to be seen. However, when it comes to our children's future, when it comes to being serious about the climate crisis and at least making sure that these companies pay some measure of additional tax if they are going to gouge us at the pumps, it is nowhere to be found. The budget promised to make housing affordable. What does it deliver? There is a plan that counts, in its projections, 800,000 new homes that are going to be built as a result of other levels of government being impressed with the government and there is a reduction in funding for non-profits that want to build the deeply affordable housing we need. I am really concerned about the rapid housing initiative, for example, and this is true for MPs across the country who have non-profits in their communities that want to build affordable housing. The stock of social housing in this country is down to 3.5%. It is the lowest in the G7. If we doubled social housing, we would still just be middle of the pack. When it comes to the rapid housing initiative, it used to be $750 million a year. As of this year, it looks like this budget is proposing only $100 million in total right across the country. The budget also promised to fix the Impact Assessment Act. What did it deliver? It delivered a complete renouncing of federal jurisdiction over nationally significant greenhouse gas emissions of major projects, for example, like Highway 413 in Ontario that the Ontario government currently plans to move ahead with. Here is what 14 leading environmental NGOs, including West Coast Environmental Law, the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment, and Greenpeace had to say about what is in this bill, “The Supreme Court said Canada should have explained when and how GHG emissions become a matter of national concern. The federal government should seize that opportunity, not abandon its responsibilities to Canadians and the environment.” I know my colleague, the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands, will have more to say about this. There are also some items in this bill I am not going to have time to get into that were not promised at all, including a plan to expand immigration detention into federal prisons being panned by former Liberal cabinet ministers. On the whole, though, the government needs to do more to follow through on the big promises it makes. It is true that whether it is young people thinking about their climate future or folks with disabilities, we are going to need far more organizing to get the budget and the legislation that we need.

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Mrs. Jenica Atwin (Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Indigenous Services, Lib.)

May/21/24 7:28:14 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his passion and commitment. I certainly support him on going further on environmental initiatives. Something that I thought was very positive in the budget was dedicated funding for friendship centres. I know that this is very much welcome news in my part of the world, and I am wondering if there is a friendship centre in the member's riding that could benefit from some of this funding.

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Mr. Mike Morrice

May/21/24 7:28:38 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is another example of a positive initiative that is not in Bill C-69, but it is in the budget. It is important funding. We do not have a friendship centre in Waterloo Region. It is something that indigenous leaders have been calling for, both in terms of land and funding to build, and it is certainly an important measure that is in the budget.

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Mrs. Cheryl Gallant (Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, CPC)

May/21/24 7:29:09 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am wondering if the member, in his analysis of the disability part of the budget, could describe the protections against provincial clawbacks and any protections against the disability tax credit promoters who fill out these forms charging an unreasonable fee and then taking a percentage of all future benefits.

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Mr. Mike Morrice

May/21/24 7:29:44 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is an excellent question. Protection from clawbacks is something that the government has been using as one of the rebuttals, I am hearing, for why the benefit was not higher. There is actually a provision in the Canada Disability Benefit Act that is meant to address this. It is an amendment that I was successful with over a year ago, which requires that the agreements between provinces, territories and the federal government be made public. To those who are saying that they are concerned they cannot go further without a clawback being applied, the agreement will be made public afterward. No province or territory should attempt to do it because Canadians and folks with disabilities will judge them for it. We also should mention that the Senate had improved the bill, which would have done more to prevent the insurance industry from clawing back any benefits from folks with disabilities. That amendment was rejected by the government. It continues to be a significant concern with what is being proposed in the Canada disability benefit, as is using the disability tax credit. The government should move away from that altogether, to make sure that folks with disabilities have barrier-free access to the benefit.

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Mrs. Julie Vignola (Beauport—Limoilou, BQ)

May/21/24 7:31:05 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, as we know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Without calling this budget hell, I can say that it is paved with good intentions, but also with interference. My colleague talked about financial support for people living with disabilities. In my constituency, people wrote to me saying they had high hopes for this support. As it turns out, they are now writing me to say that the amounts provided are nothing short of an insult. Everything that has to do with social support belongs to Quebec and the Canadian provinces. Does my colleague believe that the federal government should respect its own areas of jurisdiction, which it currently manages very poorly, and that it should leave it up to the provinces to support their people who are struggling?

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Mr. Mike Morrice

May/21/24 7:32:04 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I agree with my friend from the Bloc Québécois and hon. member for Beauport-Limoilou that this government talks a lot about good intentions. However, when it comes to people living with disabilities, I think that provincial and territorial programs are inadequate, since these people are still living below the poverty line. We need the federal government to create a program to increase the basic income for everyone living with disabilities in the country.

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Mrs. Cheryl Gallant (Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke, CPC)

May/21/24 7:33:10 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to protect the fiscal integrity of residents in the riding of Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke. Here is some of what the residents in the Upper Ottawa Valley had to say about the budget. Paula from Westmeath wrote, “I'd like you to know that I do not support this federal budget. It's time to cut spending, not increase debt. The NDP leader has shored up this unpopular government far too long past its expiration date with Canadian voters.” Sean from Petawawa wrote, “I'm asking that you please push to change the budget to reduce the deficit, not increase taxes. They're already astronomical in Canada. Instead, focus on items that will help improve Canada's productivity, which will help add tax revenue to the government without increasing taxation.” Roger from Renfrew wrote, “After the Prime Minister's outrageous delaying of the election for a week so that his about-to-be-defeated cronies will get their fat cat pensions, now the taxpayers are assaulted again with a ridiculous budget. The latest Liberal budget will impoverish Canadians for generations. Will you please do everything possible to stop them from spending taxpayer money like a drunken sailor?” Doris from Golden Lake wrote, “I'm interested in seeing a balanced budget and way less debt. The debt needs to be brought down as soon as possible and as much as possible before our country goes bankrupt.” Lucinda from Pembroke wrote, “Just a short note to let you know I do not support the Liberal budget. I don't know how any intelligent person thinks you can spend yourself out of debt. It really shows he has no concept of how ordinary, unspoiled, unprivileged people really live. Keep up your fight against such stupidity.” Sally from Cobden wrote, “Canadians, for generations to come, should not be paying for the irresponsible spending of the out-of-touch Liberals. Neither should we be taxed on capital gains to the point where it becomes impossible to pass on the property and farms that we have worked on for all our lives to build up a future and a business to be carried on by our children. I consider it government thievery to pay for their terrible decisions. We certainly need a government capable of balancing the budget.” I think John from Burnstown summed it up best when he simply wrote, “I want a government to have balanced budgets and little debt.” The thing about the government is we also have to check the tax supplement it issues alongside the budget. That is where the devil hides the details. Now, the government's most devilish detail is the plan to violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms again. Sorry, violate is wrong, the government plans to kill section 8 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The murder weapon of choice is the Canada Revenue Agency's ballistic device called a notice of non-compliance. Section 8 of the charter states everyone has the right to be secure against unreasonable search and seizure. In practice, this means that if the RCMP shows up at someone's door and demands to know something or demands to see something of theirs, every Canadian should know that they can voluntarily comply with the RCMP demand or they can tell them to come back with a search warrant. The RCMP would then have to go to a judge and explain what it wants and why it wants it. What the NDP coalition is proposing is to give unlimited power to the Canada Revenue Agency to come to someone's door, demanding to see any information they want that would assist them in making the person look like a tax cheat. If that person declines to provide the information the Prime Minister demands, the CRA would have the power to issue a notice of non-compliance and impose a fine of $50 a day. If a Canadian believes this is unfair, the government says, not to worry, they can appeal the decision to the same bureaucrats who issued the decision. Now, if the CRA denies the appeal, Canadians can resort to Federal Court at their very own considerable expense. The result will be that wealthy Canadians receive the charter's protections, while everyone else is left to the political whims of the radicals currently running this country. Of course, millions of Canadians have already learned this regressive Liberal Party will ignore the charter when it suits them, and when doing so polls well. This is the natural result of socialism. In a liberty-respecting democracy, property rights are fundamental human rights. Section 8 falls under our legal rights. Our legal rights are meant to protect our human rights. Not only is our body protected from unreasonable search and seizure, so too is our property. In order to get at someone's property, the socialists need to chip away at their legal rights. Sometimes the attack on property rights is subtle, like the new power for the CRA. Other times the attack on owning property is spelled out in black and white, as at page 41 of the budget. That is where Canadians can find the Liberal plan to invent an entirely new federal property tax. For a government so addicted to ruling by slogans and clichés, it is a little surprising it has not heard about failing to learn the lessons of history. The new proposed federal residential property tax is a perfect example of the Liberals' not learning anything from recent Liberal history, and by recent history, I am talking about this March. That is when the Liberal ministers hit up their local bars and taverns to celebrate an increase in the excise tax on alcohol. Drunk on their own arrogance, the Liberals were celebrating the fact that they were not going to pay as steep a political price. The Liberals had put the excise tax on an automatic escalator in 2017, and instead of elected, accountable political leaders' being in charge of federal taxes, the Prime Minister handed control over to fate and the inflation rate. Inflation soared thanks to government spending, so the tax on alcohol was set to match it. The Liberals made a political calculation that a 5% tax increase on alcohol would cost them more votes than a 2% increase, so they intervened. Canadians might have hoped that this would be a lesson for the Liberals in the importance of maintaining control over tax rates, but that would require humility. Having learned nothing, the Liberals are now proposing a brand new federal property tax to be imposed on Canadians who own vacant land that is zoned residential. Unlike excise taxes on alcohol, the tax rate would be controlled by the government, but everything else would be controlled by municipalities and local politicians. Just as with the excise tax on alcohol, the decision over how much tax someone pays, or whether they even have to pay the tax, would be out of the Liberals' control. The difference is that no person would control the rate of inflation, though some could influence it more than others. Whether or not someone's vacant property would be zoned residential is a different story; that would be decided by a small group of local politicians. The Liberals believe this would incentivize the construction of housing, but they do not know that for sure. What it would do is incentivize lobbying. The well-connected and privileged would lobby their council to rezone their vacant land to avoid tax until they are ready to develop it or sell it. If a developer wants to build houses on vacant land zoned residential, the decision to move forward is not entirely its own. It has to take into account interest rates, labour availability, permitting issues, weather and a host of other normal things which could delay development. The Liberal plan is to punish them with more taxes, and at the end of the day, the developer would not be the one paying the additional costs. That would be passed on to the homebuyer. Only the NDP-Liberal government could be incompetent enough to believe that inventing new taxes would build more homes. After nine years of this failed socialist experiment, Canadians are hurting from high taxes. They feel insecure about the world. While European leaders are preparing their citizens for the worst case and building up their armed forces, our socialist coalition is busy accusing Canadians of being tax cheats. The government is chipping away at our legal rights while taxing and confiscating our property. The Liberal-NDP government has maxed the tax, fuelled the crime and doubled the rent. Only common-sense Conservatives will axe the tax, stop the crime and build more homes, and we will fix the budget.

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Mr. Mark Gerretsen (Kingston and the Islands, Lib.)

May/21/24 7:42:50 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I listened to the member's entire speech, and the one thing I just cannot wrap my head around is how she can accuse government spending and government investing in Canadians through our budget of being inflationary. Conservatives have been saying for months now that by the investments we are putting into Canadians and the money that we are putting into the budget, we are just going to fuel inflation. However, the opposite is true; this is the lowest that inflation has been in three years. Over the last four months, inflation has been in the target range that the Bank of Canada sets, which is between 2% and 3%. In reality, there is no rise in inflation as a result of the budget. Does the member not recognize that what she is purporting and what the Conservatives are purporting was never actually a reality?

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Mrs. Cheryl Gallant

May/21/24 7:43:55 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I guess what the member just said explains that he does not understand the basic fundamentals of economics. The government threw billions of dollars into the economy. As a consequence of there being more money in the economy, prices went up, and when prices go up, inflation occurs. Maybe the member has not been grocery shopping, but a pound of hamburger on sale used to be two bucks. Now, in just a few short years, if we can get it for four and a half dollars a pound we are doing well. It is inflation. He is out of touch. What happens to bring down inflation is that interest rates are increased, and they have kept those interest rates pressuring. Now we are at the point where we are almost at zero productivity. The inflation rate being lower on a monthly basis is not necessarily a consequence of less government spending, as it is spending more, but it is a consequence of everybody's being broke.

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Ms. Leah Gazan (Winnipeg Centre, NDP)

May/21/24 7:45:15 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, like my colleague, I did have some concerns about the budget. We know that currently there is an attack on trans kids. We know that currently, certainly according to what I have seen in the House of Commons, there is an attack on the right to choose to have access to safe, trauma-informed abortion care. I am wondering whether my colleague supports me and millions of Canadians around the country in ensuring these human rights, because she spoke about fundamental human rights to safe, trauma-informed abortion care and also gender-affirming care.

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Mrs. Cheryl Gallant

May/21/24 7:46:01 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, here we go again. It was last week, but now we are tag-teaming. The NDP is tag-teaming with the Liberals. They are so far down in the polls and are so desperate that they are already playing the abortion card, and the election is still at least a year away.

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Mr. Sébastien Lemire (Abitibi—Témiscamingue, BQ)

May/21/24 7:46:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member for Renfrew—Nipissing—Pembroke a question. Her riding includes the town of Deep River. The member is also my riding neighbour. We share a small part of the southern Témiscamingue region, and we are both close to the Ottawa River. There is a project to build a nuclear waste disposal facility in Deep River. We know that because there have been nuclear facilities there in the past. I am very concerned about the environmental impact that could have. We know that spills are happening as we speak. However, it is very difficult to get any media coverage of what is happening. It is very difficult to draw attention to this situation, even though it is having a major impact on ecosystems. Since the Government of Canada announced major investments in small modular nuclear reactors in the most recent budget, is my colleague worried that her riding, particularly the town of Deep River, will become a nuclear dumping ground for the rest of Canada and that nuclear waste will be brought there? Is my colleague concerned about that from an environmental perspective? I would like her to comment on that.

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Mrs. Cheryl Gallant

May/21/24 7:47:31 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the low-level, near-surface waste deposit is very low-level radioactive waste that is coming out. It is not spent fuel rods. It is nothing that is really hot or even medium level. It is gloves, booties and other things that are in everyday use on people so they are kept safe. I received over 100 questions from people on my side of the river in the community as well as from the member's side of the river, and I thought they were really good questions. I found a place in eastern Ontario where there is a similar near-surface waste disposal site, in Cobourg, Ontario. I went there with some scientists and asked them the 100 questions. I will tell the member that for every piercing question, they were able to provide an explanation and assure me so that I can assure my citizens that it is indeed a safe way of disposing of low-level waste.

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

May/21/24 7:48:56 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise tonight to participate in the debate on Bill C-69. The debate has been treated by some speakers as a debate on the whole budget. That is fair enough as it is the budget implementation bill. I certainly appreciated very much the remarks by my colleague, the hon. member for Kitchener Centre, moments ago, who focused on some aspects of Bill C-69 and the budget that I will not be able to address in my remarks. In the time I have available, I want to dive deeply into one part of Bill C-69. For those who are observing tonight's debate, perhaps I can just back up and say that this is what is called an omnibus budget bill. It is exactly the kind of bill that, in the 2015 election platform by the Liberals, they said they would not be using. It is an omnibus budget bill in that it deals with many aspects of things that are in the budget, and particularly a reference in the budget to the court case on impact assessment legislation. What is tucked into a bill that is over 400 pages is, from page 555 to page 581, a section I do not believe should be in there. I will be very clear from the start that it is a rewriting of substantial sections of the Impact Assessment Act. The irony is probably not lost on people who have tracked the debate on environmental assessment in this country that when the Liberals brought in repairs to the environmental assessment legislation that they had promised would be done in the election platform of 2015, that bill was also called Bill C-69. I voted against that bill. I will be voting against this one too. This speech is my effort to try to persuade government members, and particularly the Minister of Environment and the Minister of Justice, to rethink things and to pull what is called part 4, division 28, of Bill C-69 and instead bring in what was promised in 2015, repairing what had happened to our impact assessment legislation, which is usually called environmental assessment legislation in this country. I do not have much time to set this out, so forgive me for taking the time it takes to explain it. In 1975, this country held its first federal environmental assessment, ironically, of the Wreck Cove hydro project in my home province of Nova Scotia, on my home island of Cape Breton Island, and I attended those hearings. The federal government at that time was operating under something called the environmental assessment review process, a guidelines order by order in council to the federal cabinet. It set out basically that when the federal government did something, the federal government reviewed its own actions. There is no question of constitutionality because the federal government was reviewing its own actions. The rule under the guidelines order was that if it was on federal land, involved federal money or permits given under certain kinds of acts, one had to have an environmental assessment. That general formulation went into the drafting in the late 1980s, under the government of the late Right Hon. Brian Mulroney, of an environmental assessment process that again started with the four corners of federal jurisdiction, including whether something is on federal land and involving federal money. It evolved into something called the law list permits, which were given under various acts. The whole scheme worked very well. It evolved. There were many amendments over the years. It had a five-year review process. By the time 2012 rolled around, one could talk to almost anyone in the industry about it and hear the same thing. It was predictable. With the Mining Association of Canada, for instance, I remember the CEO, Pierre Gratton, asking why the Conservatives were trying to wreck the act now. He said that we had just finally made it right and liked the way it worked. A federal environmental assessment act was brought in under Brian Mulroney and enacted under former prime minister Jean Chrétien. It had evolved over the years. In the spring of 2012, in an omnibus budget bill called Bill C-38, the government of former prime minister Stephen Harper set out to destroy the legislation. It was repealed in its entirety and was replaced with something called CEAA, 2012. At the same time, it also went after the pieces of legislation that triggered environmental assessment, the law list sections, the Fisheries Act, the Navigable Waters Protection Act, and so on. To fast-forward, in the election of 2015, the Liberals promised in the platform to repair and fix what had been done by Harper to environmental assessment, to the Fisheries Act and the Navigable Waters Protection Act. In 2016 and 2017, various ministers went to work. The current Minister of Public Safety, who was the then minister of fisheries, actually did fix the Fisheries Act. He got it back to what it had been before and even improved it. The former minister of transport, our former colleague, the Hon. Marc Garneau, really fixed the Navigable Waters Protection Act. Somehow or other, our former minister of environment, Catherine McKenna, was persuaded, I believe by officials in her department, not to fix it. The single biggest change that was made, besides repealing the Environmental Assessment Act, was to ditch the criteria that tethered environmental assessment to areas of federal jurisdiction if it was on federal land, involved federal money or under a permit given by the federal government. Instead, Stephen Harper's government created something called the “designated projects” list, which could be anything the ministers thought they wanted to put on the list. It was project-based but not decision-based, and it could be anything, at the minister's discretion. That was CEAA 2012. It meant we went from having 5,000 to 6,000 federal projects a year reviewed, and they were mostly paper reviews that went quickly, to fewer than 100 reviewed every year. We can see perhaps the attraction for people in the civil service to not go back to actually reviewing the federal projects every single year and to keep it to fewer than 100. Somehow, the federal government, under former minister Catherine McKenna, put forward Bill C-69 and decided to reject the advice of the expert environmental assessment panel, under the former chair of BAPE Johanne Gélinas. It kept the key elements Stephen Harper had put in place, which was that the Environmental Assessment Agency was no longer responsible for many assessments, and regulatory bodies such as the National Energy Board, now the Canada Energy Regulator, the offshore petroleum boards or the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission would do their environmental assessments separately. It also got rid of the idea that we are tethered strongly to federal jurisdiction. It remained discretionary. That is why I voted against Bill C-69.. Former Alberta premier Jason Kenney said that this was the anti-pipeline act. I said that it was completely discretionary to the minister in a different government and that it was the pro-pipeline act. Where is the rooting to federal jurisdiction? Where is the commitment to review everything the federal government does to make sure we have considered its environmental impacts? Those were all thrown out the window. I may have been the only one in the pro-environmental assessment community, although I do not think I was the only one, who actually cheered on October 13, 2023, when the Supreme Court of Canada said that the designated projects list was actually ultra vires the federal government. It would just ask a minister to say what project they want on a list, but it was not rooted in federal jurisdiction the way it had been from 1975, under a guidelines order, to 1993, when it became law, right up until 2012 and Bill C-38 when Harper repealed it. Then, for some crazy reason, and I use the word “crazy” advisedly because I do not know the reason and I am not referring to anyone in particular, the Liberals decided to keep the designated project list, which is the part that the reference in the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada said was ultra vires the federal government and now stuffed in an omnibus budget bill that we were told we would never see. We get amendments to the Environmental Assessment Act that keep the designated projects list. I do not think this new version in Bill C-69 is going to get Supreme Court of Canada approval. I know it will not get environmental assessments for projects across this country that need to be assessed. It will not get environmental assessment for Highway 413. It will not get environmental assessment for things that are squarely within federal jurisdiction. What it will do is be a quick and dirty fix that only goes to the finance committee for study. With that, I will close my opening remarks with what I can only describe as disgust.

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