44th Parl. 1st Sess.
May 27, 2024 11:00AM
Madam Speaker, there is a bit of tortured logic there. This debate is supposed to be about Bill C-49, not about the price on pollution.
My hon. colleague might want to read the Atlantic accords. The Atlantic accords are a specific mechanism requiring that a province and the federal government agree on everything and that provinces introduce legislation that is exactly the same as what is going through the federal House. It is something on which we must collaborate. It is something that was attacked by Stephen Harper. It is extremely important for the people who live in Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia.
With respect to the price on pollution, we have had this conversation many times. Provinces and territories are very capable of coming up with pricing systems that they can put in place in their jurisdictions if they think they can do it better, as Alberta does with the industrial pricing system and as British Columbia does with the retail pricing system. Provinces have flexibility.
My hon. colleague may deny the reality of climate change. He may continue to put his head in the sand and pretend that he is an ostrich. However, as I said before, at the end of the day, climate change is real. We have to take steps to address it. We have to work in a manner that will enable us to seize economic opportunities, as countries around the world are doing. The Luddite-type behaviour on that side of the House is shameful.
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- May/27/24 12:31:51 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I think we know there are two things going on here: The Conservative Party is against clean energy and the Conservative Party is against Atlantic Canadians. It is very simple.
Let me bring members back to 2007. In 2007, a Conservative member defended Atlantic Canada by voting against the budget. It was my friend Bill Casey. What happened to him? The Conservatives were going to rip apart the Atlantic Accord, so they threw him out of the party.
This is about sustainable jobs for Atlantic Canadians. The premiers want it and the people want it. It is our job to deliver for them.
Can the minister share his thoughts about the trillion dollars to be had in the next 16 years?
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- May/27/24 12:32:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, there is an enormous economic opportunity for both of the provinces to pursue the work being done to enable offshore wind development and onshore wind development. As I said, I was in Germany recently. We are working very proactively with the German government to ensure there is a place for this hydrogen to go, that the commercial terms will actually work, that we see investment coming to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and Labrador, and that jobs go to both of those provinces.
My hon. colleague is exactly right about the history. The attacks by the Conservative Party on the Atlantic accords were shameful then. Given the active support of both governments under the Atlantic accords and the attacks on the Atlantic accords now, it is unbelievable that the parties across the way are willing to say they are effectively opposed to the Atlantic accords.
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- May/27/24 12:33:42 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, earlier in the debate, my hon. colleague from Coast of Bays—Central—Notre Dame put a question to the minister regarding the amendments brought forth by the FFAW union and the fishers and families who are going to be impacted by this. At least from the television feed, the minister did not answer that question, so I am going to give him an opportunity to answer it once again.
Of the amendments that were requested by the hard-working fishers and families who are going to be impacted by this, the ones my hon. colleague says he is standing up for, how many were actually adopted by the minister?
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- May/27/24 12:34:41 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, there was broad consultation with respect to this bill, and that work was done in lockstep with the governments of Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia. When we brought that bill forward, what we saw on the part of the Conservative Party was seven weeks of filibuster, seven weeks of wasted time, seven weeks of wasted taxpayers' money talking about muscle cars and other irrelevant things.
At the end of the day, we are moving forward in a manner that addresses the concerns of fish harvesters and others in both of these provinces. There is a regional environmental assessment under way, which will ensure that the concerns and thoughts of all relevant stakeholders, very much including fish harvesters, are heard.
There are many examples around the world of a robust offshore wind industry existing alongside a very robust fishery. It is shocking that folks have such a limited view about the capabilities of the people who live in the provinces they are supposed to serve.
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- May/27/24 12:35:46 p.m.
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It is my duty to interrupt the proceedings and put forthwith the question necessary to dispose of the motion now before the House.
The question is on the motion.
Shall I dispense?
Some hon. members: No.
[Chair read text of motion to House]
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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- May/27/24 12:36:55 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, we request a recorded vote, please.
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- May/27/24 12:36:58 p.m.
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- May/27/24 1:20:18 p.m.
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I declare the motion carried.
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Madam Speaker, I look forward to resuming my speech and to hearing what my colleague from Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon has to say, as I am splitting my time with him today.
I work on the natural resources committee, and we are the ones who went through the study of this bill. From that perspective, in my speech before, I was setting the record straight, because there was some misrepresentation as to how we went through the entire process of the bill.
Having gone through it, as I had said, and I will say it again today, the Liberal government has made a mess and it continues to refuse to clean it up. It did that with its Impact Assessment Act, which the Supreme Court said was unconstitutional, and now those same Liberals are once again right on track to interfere with local industry and provincial jurisdiction.
In this case, we are talking about the Atlantic fishing industry. We have heard from many fishing groups that are deeply concerned about a lack of consultation and a lack of protection for their livelihood. They do not feel that enough has been done to rule out the potential for major irreversible damage to their industry. The government is ignoring them, but we need to hear what they have to say for themselves. I am going to continue sharing what a few more witnesses told us at committee.
Michael Barron, from the Cape Breton Fish Harvesters Association, said:
In an industry that is a major economic driver for Nova Scotia, the lack of consultation has not gone unnoticed by all fish harvester associations throughout Nova Scotia.
Dr. Kris Vascotto, from the Nova Scotia Fisheries Alliance for Energy Engagement, said:
Historically, members have relied on the federal government to protect the interests and viability of their enterprises. They have worked to support science and refine rules for the fishery, and they have tried to be part of the solution. In turn, they rely on the government to make good decisions.
Perhaps this is why members are surprised and dismayed by the content of the bill before you. Collectively, we understand that, as a planet, we are facing profound challenges related to climate change risk, and we realize that we all have an important role in finding a viable solution. However, rushing poorly thought-out legislation to govern an industrial marine development that remains largely in an experimental stage for Atlantic waters and lacks proper safeguards to ensure a viable and resilient coastal economy is myopic.
There are some important things that so many fishing groups mention consistently. They made it clear that they were absolutely not against renewable or wind energy per se, but they wanted acknowledgement that there were still many unknown factors and potentially negative impacts on ocean wildlife and their ecosystems. If that happens, it would devastate their industry and it may not be reversible. There is a witness who addressed this concern.
Dr. Kevin Stokesbury, dean of the School for Marine Science and Technology, shared his thoughts at the committee. He said:
Developing the wind farms will add hard structure, thousands of small islands, throughout these areas, islands that pull energy out of the system. This will change the environment: the sea floor makeup, the current structure, the acoustics both during construction and operation, and the electromagnetic field. All these will impact the associated flora and fauna of the areas. This will happen on the scales of the individual turbine, which is centimetres to kilometres; the wind farm fields, from tens to hundreds of kilometres; and the entire eastern seaboard. It will affect the fisheries. Some will be able to harvest within the wind farms; some will not. All will have to navigate through or around them.
Right now, some wind farms are beginning to monitor the marine environment and the animals associated with them, but it is a disjointed effort. There is no overall framework to coordinate the different scientific research or push for broader ecosystem understanding.
What we have heard from local witnesses in Atlantic Canada is that Bill C-49 has been rushed and lacks the necessary safeguards for the fishing industry.
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Madam Speaker, as indicated earlier, Bill C-49 is all about economic growth and prosperity, and it provides a great deal of hope. I know that because many of my Atlantic colleagues talk about how important it is to see Bill C-49 pass.
We have many people wearing barongs today on Parliament Hill, recognizing that June is Filipino Heritage Month. Part of growth is seeing how communities have been able to participate in growing in Atlantic Canada. The type of growth that Canadians want to see, I believe, is of an economic nature, providing opportunities for all people to grow and be a part of a community.
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- May/27/24 1:26:52 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, putting the livelihoods of tens of thousands of fishers and all the spinoff industry that comes from it at the behest of another industry is not the way we build an economy. It is not the way we get more people involved in the economy.
As the witnesses, who I referenced in my speech, talked about, they are happy to see more economic development in the region. They just want to see the process done properly. They want to see proper consultation. Many fisher groups, Unifor, talked about how there was a complete lack of consultation with the fishers and the different associations in the fishing community. They are worried that their livelihood will be lost because there is a lack of certainty and clarity in this legislation.
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- May/27/24 1:27:45 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I enjoyed my time with the member on the natural resources committee. Like the member for Nanaimo—Ladysmith, who brought up her Newfoundland heritage, I, too, have a family heritage there. I lived there for three years while going to university. I actually lived in a lighthouse. I can attest, as well, to the vast wind resource available in Newfoundland. I was blown around quite a bit.
Newfoundland and Labrador wants this. Nova Scotia wants this. Regional assessments will be done that will have full involvement of the fishing industry. Why does the Conservative Party still hold up this bill when everybody wants it? The Conservatives want to block it just because it involves sustainable energy.
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- May/27/24 1:28:42 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, our desire in committee was to ensure that we passed a bill that was constitutional. When the bill came to us, it had over 35 direct references to the unconstitutional Impact Assessment Act, and the government gave us no timeline as to when it would deal with that. Therefore, to us, it seemed absolutely pressing and urgent to ensure that we passed a bill that was constitutional.
The Liberals and the NDP wanted none of it, so we ensured that we would set out to get a bill that would be constitutional so that investors in the wind industry would have absolute certainty and confidence when they looked to make proposals on building their industry.
Also, we want to ensure that the current users of the waters, the fishers, have the certainty they need so that their industry can continue and flourish. We do not need these two industries combatting each other. There needs to be a way to figure out if they can coexist, and this bill would provide no certainty for that.
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Madam Speaker, this divide-and-conquer approach seems very typical of the Liberal government. The Liberals say one thing, do another and it pits group against group and region against region. I wonder if my colleague could comment further on whether Bill C-49 is about that; not about building prosperity, but rather playing politics with our federation.
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- May/27/24 1:30:11 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, it is absolutely true that we continue to see the divide-and-conquer approach, and it goes no further than with the Impact Assessment Act. We know how much devastation that has brought entirely across the country, and the Liberals continue to hide behind that and use that as a way to divide people on this bill as well.
I know the government said that it fixed that now in the budget, but there really was no effort for committees to get involved and for people to come to talk about what these changes needed to be. The Liberals are continuing to take a sledgehammer approach to a very important part of not just the renewable sector, but also the entire energy system and our nationwide economy as a whole. The Liberals are choosing to divide people over that.
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Madam Speaker, after nine years of the Prime Minister, life is unaffordable. With energy bills through the roof, Canadians are struggling to afford to heat their homes and keep the lights on. Not only has the carbon tax driven up the cost of energy, but the government has launched a war on Canada's natural resources and energy sectors.
Bill C-69, which was deemed largely unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada last October, created burdensome red tape, drastically increased approval times and drove away resource exploration and extraction projects. Now the Liberals seek to revive parts of that unconstitutional bill through this attack on both traditional and renewable offshore energy projects in Atlantic Canada. Bill C-49 will drive away investment through more uncertainty, red tape and longer timelines.
In 2022, the environment minister reluctantly approved the Bay du Nord offshore oil project, calling it one of the most difficult decisions the government had ever made. This project will create more than 13,000 jobs: 8,900 in Newfoundland and Labrador, 2,200 in Ontario, 900 in Quebec and 700 in Alberta. It will also add about $97 billion and change to our national GDP. However, thanks to the government's reckless deficit spending, costs have increased, and burdensome red tape has created uncertainty. Thanks to these factors, the project was delayed by three years, and it is still unclear whether the project will ever be completed at all.
In Nova Scotia, a private company was set to generate electricity from the massive tides in the Bay of Fundy. However, the project was eventually cancelled due to the mountainous red tape. That company shut down its operations in Canada entirely, costing jobs for workers and affordable renewable energy for Nova Scotians.
Over the last couple of years, multiple countries have pleaded for Canada to provide them with LNG to help end their reliance on Russian gas. What did the Prime Minister say to those countries? He told them that there was no business case for Canada to export LNG from our east coast. Germany went on to sign an LNG deal with Qatar and built a massive receiving port in just a matter of months. What could have been powerful paycheques for Atlantic Canadians turned into more dollars for dictators. That is shameful.
Of course, as a British Columbian, I would be remiss if I did not talk about the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion, which Kinder Morgan at the beginning was prepared to complete on its own, without taxpayer funding. After the government made the project unfeasible, Kinder Morgan pulled out, and the government bought the pipeline. From there, costs exploded and taxpayers have now spent more than $30 billion on a project that was estimated to cost just $7 billion only a few years ago. This is the NDP-Liberal government's record on energy and resource projects: Delay, drive up costs, and eventually drive projects away.
I have talked a lot about the woeful lack of productivity in Canada's economy recently, because it is truly an emergency. Even the Bank of Canada said that. Canada produces just 79% of what the United States does per hour. That ranks us behind all of our G7 peers, maybe save for Italy right now. Adjusted for inflation, Canada's GDP per capita now sits lower than it did in 2014. Meanwhile, businesses are closing at an alarming rate, and the data does not even capture the full story for small businesses.
The most recent statistics from the superintendent of bankruptcy showed a 66.2% year-over-year increase in business insolvencies for the year ending March 31, 2024. A recent article in The Globe and Mail highlighted that many small business insolvencies are not even captured under business insolvencies, as many small business owners have to take personal liability on leases and loans. When they go bankrupt, it is considered a consumer bankruptcy, of which Canada saw 33,885 in the first quarter of 2024, an increase of 14% year-over-year during the same period.
Driving away investment and development of energy and resource projects will only make things worse. In a time when businesses are struggling and Canadians cannot afford to pay their bills because their paycheques do not go far enough, the government is chugging ahead with another attack on energy, jobs, economic growth and even the Constitution.
Clause 19 of Bill C-49 would open the door to more red tape and lengthy delays. It would shift decision-making powers on licence approvals to the federal and provincial ministers, while tripling the amount of time that decision can take. Clause 28 would give the federal minister, with the approval of the provincial minister, the power to outright ban drilling in certain areas and even halt projects that are already approved and in progress. If this bill were to pass with clause 28 as written, it could put an end to offshore petroleum drilling in Atlantic Canada, killing good-paying jobs for workers and further strengthening eastern Canada's dependence on foreign oil imports from dictatorships like Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
Clauses 61 and 62 bring the unconstitutional Bill C-69 into the review process, allowing the minister to attach any conditions they see fit to approval. I would be remiss if I did not mention that, back in 2016, I was a political staffer, and I went over this bill at the environment committee. At that time, it was very clear that the intention of the government with this legislation was to give the minister unilateral power. It was to give the government more control over the private sector. It was to give the government the ability to halt projects through delay tactics. We have seen that now, and we are living it now. The last thing we need to do is to include those measures in this legislation.
We have seen how the government treats resource projects in this country. Clauses 61 and 62 will invariably be abused by the government to attach so many strings to approvals that projects will indeed become unfeasible, as we have witnessed. Canadians simply cannot afford any more of the current government and its anti-energy, anti-job and anti-economic growth policies. The government has shown time and time again that it is dead set on killing Canada's natural resource sector. If the environment minister had his way, not a single resource would ever be extracted in this country again. He would take away people's right to have a gasoline car as well.
While the government is focused on killing jobs and increasing our dependence on foreign sources of oil, Conservatives are focused on creating powerful paycheques for Canadians and getting Canada's bountiful resources to market so that our people can prosper.
I will be joining my Conservative colleagues in voting against this NDP-Liberal attack on Canada's resource industries.
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- May/27/24 1:38:47 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, I will say from the outset, because my colleague mentioned the oil industry, that I have family members who work in the oil industry in Newfoundland as well. I support the oil industry wholeheartedly.
He mentioned “powerful paycheques”. Could you please give this House your definition of a powerful paycheque?
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- May/27/24 1:39:07 p.m.
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The hon. member knows that he is to address questions and comments through the Chair and not directly to the member.
The hon. member for Mission—Matsqui—Fraser Canyon.
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- May/27/24 1:39:15 p.m.
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Madam Speaker, what does a powerful paycheque mean? It means that more of the money one earns stays in one's pocket and not in the hands of Ottawa. There is not a single Canadian who does not agree with that. That is what the Conservatives are set on doing by winning the next federal election.
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