Okay.
It strikes me, Mr. Chair and other members of the committee, that this is one of the examples of why it's so dangerous to make substantive changes to so many acts in an omnibus bill.
Division 16, which changes the Canada Marine Act, I don't believe had anything like proper scrutiny or examination. When I was reviewing it, I became concerned about some of the implications and contacted West Coast Environmental Law. They thought this was quite troubling, but they hadn't heard of it or seen it or been able to testify to it.
The first part of the amendments would delete the sections of the bill that allow cabinet to make rules allowing for information regarding activities in ports to be kept confidential; authorize the destruction of documents created or submitted in respect of activities in ports; set out the rules of procedure for hearings in relation to projects and activities in ports; and give to any person or body, including a province, port authority, or industrial actor, the power to make rules of procedure for such hearings.
These are extremely strange, sweeping changes to the management of port authorities, involving secrecy, destruction of documents, and allowing industry to have input into organizing hearings. West Coast Environmental Law put forward the following scenario based on these changes. They wrote:
...Cabinet could: sell a port to a port authority, hand over control of LNG facilities in that port to the province of B.C., pass into federal law any documents or provincial statutory instruments related to the operation of LNG facilities without making those documents public, authorize facilities and regulators to destroy or keep confidential any information that may be relevant to LNG operations, and appoint a tribunal comprised of industry representatives to consider any disputes regarding those LNG facilities and to set out the rules of procedure for hearing those disputes.
In other words, the potential use of these sections to accomplish some fairly nefarious things of high importance to people in my province has received no review at all by witnesses, nor adequate debate in this committee. It all comes down to my one minute on this amendment, which will surely fail. However, I'd like to draw attention to the potential of what's going to happen here.
It's one minute per amendment; thank you, Joe.
The next part, of course, is an attempt to ensure that for greater certainty, the undertakings and changes found within the above sections will be required to be subject to the requirements of what remains of the Fisheries Act, the Species at Risk Act, the Navigation Protection Act, the navigable waters protection act, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012. This is pretty weak protection, given the sweeping changes that are proposed in this section.
