Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise on behalf of the constituents of Kelowna—Lake Country.
I rise today to speak on the government's latest attempt at over-regulating, bureaucracy-building legislation, Bill C-49.
I have noted in this debate that several speakers on the government side have scarcely spoken about the details in their own legislation. They have spoken solely on the offshore renewable revenue they believe this bill would potentially offer to applicable provinces. I say “potentially” because if the government members had taken more time to study their own bill in greater detail, they would have found that Bill C-49 features such a mess of new red tape, it would be surprising if anyone could complete an offshore project of any kind, let alone have it generate revenue.
This is symptomatic of the government's approach to Canada's resource sector. For every talking point, there are miles of new regulations, new levers for federal bureaucracies to kill jobs and projects, and endless delays. Shovel-ready projects that start with Liberal photo ops are left to be strangled by bureaucratic Liberal laws and regulations.
After eight years, the Liberal government has continued to drop the ball on project after project. We would think the government might act with some humility after last Friday when the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the government's previous pipeline-killing legislation, Bill C-69, was unconstitutional.
Conservatives warned the Liberals repeatedly that their no-more-pipelines act, Bill C-69, did not respect provincial jurisdiction, and was a power grab by the Prime Minister and his career activist environment minister to phase out these key sectors.
Liberals were called out by energy workers who wanted to keep their livelihoods; by indigenous communities wanting to sustainably develop their lands; by stakeholders in multiple sectors, including wind, hydro and critical minerals; by nine out of 10 provincial governments and every territorial government; and now by the Supreme Court of Canada.
I could speak for hours on the comments made by provincial and business leaders on the Supreme Court of Canada ruling against the unconstitutionality of the Liberal bill, Bill C-69, but I will mention just a few.
The Premier of Alberta said, “The ruling today represents an opportunity for all provinces to stop that bleeding and begin the process of re-attracting those investments and jobs into our economies.” The premier also said, “And we will continue to fight against Ottawa’s unfair overreach”.
The economies of British Columbia and Alberta have been closely intertwined, especially with the resource sector. Many residents in my community of Kelowna—Lake Country have worked in the resource sector in Alberta in the past.
The president of the Independent Contractors and Businesses Association of B.C. said in an interview on Bill C-69 that there is complexity, confusion and cost, and as a result, investors did not know if they were going to be investing in Canada, and whether or not they could get projects to “yes”. That was causing investors to pause and look at other countries rather than Canada.
The World Bank came out a few years ago and ranked Canada number 64 in the world in the length of time it takes to approve a project. That is a very embarrassing statistic for the country.
A 2019 C.D. Howe Institute report titled “A Crisis of Our Own Making: Prospects for Major Natural Resource Projects in Canada”, stated:
With investment in Canada’s resources sector already depressed, the federal government’s proposed Bill C-69 would further discourage investment in the sector by congesting the assessment process with wider public policy concerns and exacerbating the political uncertainty facing proponents with a highly subjective standard for approval.
That is exactly what happened. The cost of the Liberals' refusal to reverse course was billions of dollars in potential investment that was taken out of Canada. Energy projects that would have been built in Canada were instead built in countries with lower environmental standards and fewer labour protections.
This new bill, Bill C-49, should be removed by the government and completely revised because it applies provisions from that now unconstitutional bill, Bill C-69, to Canada's Atlantic offshore sector.
Looking at the core details of Bill C-49, it is very clear in the needless political roadblocks it seeks to create that it would stall projects in our offshore industries.
It triples the approvals timeline from the current framework and takes the final authority in the decision-making away from on-the-ground regulators to ministers in Ottawa. This is once again the Liberal philosophy of “Ottawa knows best”. What would be the result of handing the final approval of offshore energy projects to our Greenpeace activist environment minister? The answer is obvious: no good-paying jobs for hard-working Canadians and instead, political decision-making. We know this from other legislation, like the government's just transition bill, which is seeking to take away jobs from energy workers in exchange for employment that cannot guarantee the same levels of benefits or pay.
Why is the government seeking to hand operational control of the Atlantic offshore industry to a Liberal environment minister who the Newfoundland Liberal member for Avalon said did not understand the “issues of the region”? It is a question only the Liberals can answer.
Regulators who have worked in this sector and this region for years are better placed to make these decisions on a timeline that already works for both regulators and industry. Adding more red tape, which often does nothing more than repeat pre-existing environmental reviews, will do nothing to create good-paying jobs, particularly in renewables. We know this because of the unmitigated disaster the government made of a viable tidal energy power project in Nova Scotia.
Sustainable Marine Energy's Bay of Fundy tidal energy project had enormous potential to deliver clean energy for Canadians. Had it been built, it could have generated up to 2,500 megawatts, while bringing in $100 million in inward investment and eliminating 17,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide annually, the equivalent of taking nearly 3,700 cars off the road. The project was proceeding at pace under the Harper government, but after the Liberal government's election, Sustainable Marine Energy was snagged in a forest of red tape from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.
After eight years, that company withdrew the project completely last spring. Despite $28.5 million of taxpayer money having been invested into the project, the government refused to release this clean green project from a regulatory trap of its design. The result: taxpayers are out $28 million, Canada loses out on a powerful source of green energy, and the people of Nova Scotia, who had this environmentally friendly project killed in front of them in Ottawa by bureaucrats, are forced to pay Ottawa's carbon tax now.
Bill C-49 will never deliver a dime of renewable revenue to provinces so long as the Liberal government regulates renewable projects like tidal energy out of existence. It will also not deliver revenue from vital offshore drilling projects when the now unconstitutional Bill C-69 enforces impact assessment reviews that last for more than 1,600 days, or when Bill C-55 allows the fisheries minister to select prohibited development areas solely on her call, the power which the legislation today also reaffirms.
The Prime Minister, in the aftermath of Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine, said there was no business case for LNG exports to be shipped out through Atlantic Canadian ports to our European allies. The United States became the largest exporter of liquefied natural gas in 2021, as projects ramped up production and deliveries surged to Europe to alleviate the energy crisis there.
Just last week, one of Canada's closest and historic allies, France, signed a 27-year deal with Qatar for its LNG production. A 27-year deal would have been a fantastic way to generate revenue for Newfoundlanders, Nova Scotians, Albertans, British Columbians and Canadians. Instead, the Liberal government has no clue about the value of Canada's resources. Instead, it is focused on gaining more political control and its ideological job-killing agenda. It is not even a green agenda because, as I mentioned earlier, the government is happy to kill green projects just as slowly.
A Conservative government will support Canadians in every region by responsibly building energy projects of every variety that bring home jobs for Canadians. We will build green projects to sustain our environment, not just regulate them out of existence. We will champion Canada's world-class resources to our allies and we will deliver results.
The Liberal government only creates more red tape, regulates projects out of existence, drives away investment and brings more control to Ottawa. The Liberal government is just not worth the cost.