Bill C-5 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Indian Oil and Gas Act

This enactment amends the Indian Oil and Gas Act to clarify and expand the existing regulation-making powers and to add new ones, particularly with respect to licences, permits and leases for the exploration and exploitation of oil and gas on reserve lands and the determination and payment of oil and gas royalties. It also puts in place sanctions for contraventions of the Act as well as provisions for its enforcement.

Speaker's Ruling

[The Speaker, Liberal, Peter Milliken]

There is one motion in amendment standing on the notice paper for the report stage of Bill C-5.

Motion No. 1 will not be selected by the Chair, because it requires a royal recommendation.

There being no motions at report stage the House will now proceed without debate to the putting of the question on the motion to concur in the bill at report stage.

The House proceeded to the consideration of Bill C-5, An Act to amend the Indian Oil and Gas Act, as reported with amendment from the committee.

Business of the House

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, today, Bill S-3, the energy efficiency bill, was read a second time and referred to the Standing Committee on Natural Resources.

Just before question period, we were debating Bill C-13, the Canada Grain Act, but it appears the coalition of the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc has been revived and it is supporting a motion that, if adopted, will defeat that bill. It is proposing to kill the bill before it even gets to committee. It is unfortunate that the coalition's first act is to abdicate its role as legislators by denying close scrutiny and study of a bill at a committee.

After my statement, the government will be calling Bill C-5, Indian oil and gas, followed by Bill C-18, the bill respecting RCMP pensions, which is at second reading.

Tomorrow, we will continue with the business that I just laid out for the remainder of today.

When the House returns on April 20, after two weeks of constituency work, we will continue with any unfinished business from this week, with the addition of Bill C-25, the truth in sentencing bill, Bill C-24, the Canada-Peru free trade agreement, Bill C-11, human pathogens and toxins and Bill C-6, consumer products safety. We can see we have a lot of work to do yet. All of these bills are at second reading, with the exception of Bill C-11, which will be at report stage.

During the first week the House returns from the constituency weeks, we expect that Bill C-3, the Arctic waters bill will be reported back from committee. We also anticipate that the Senate will send a message respecting Bill S-2, the customs act. If and when that happens, I will be adding those two bills to the list of business for that week.

Thursday, April 23, shall be an allotted day.

[Jay Hill, Conservative, Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague, the House leader for the official opposition, for his multitude of questions.

First of all, as he indicated, today we will continue debate on Bill C-14, the organized crime bill. I would point out that it is thanks to the Minister of Justice, whose leadership this morning overcame an opposition tactic aimed at delaying Bill C-14 that we do have an agreement to move that bill forward. As a result of the minister's intervention, Bill C-14 will in fact be sent to committee at the end of today, pursuant to a special order of the House.

Tonight the House will consider a take note debate on the international conference on Afghanistan hosted by The Hague.

As I mentioned earlier, we adopted a special order for Bill C-14. Unfortunately that special order did not cover the second justice bill that is slated for debate today. In fact it is conceivable we would have already been into that debate had it not been for the delaying tactics of the opposition earlier this morning.

This is the bill that the hon. member referred to, Bill C-15, the drug offences bill. It is another key piece of our government legislation that will help curb gang violence, yet we do not see it moving quickly through the House. That said, I am hopeful we can complete the bill today or have it completed at the latest tomorrow, provided the NDP does not invoke another delaying tactic as it did this morning.

Following the drug offences bill, we have scheduled for debate Bill C-7, marine liability; Bill S-3, energy efficiency; and Bill C-13, the Canada Grain Act. All of these bills are at second reading.

On Monday, pursuant to a special order adopted yesterday, we will complete the third reading stage of Bill C-2, the Canada-EFTA free trade agreement bill. After considerable delay in this chamber, it will be nice to move that bill over to our colleagues down the hall in the Senate.

We will continue next week with any uncompleted business from this week, with the addition of Bill C-5 regarding the Indian Oil and Gas Act, which is at report stage and third reading stage, and Bill C-18 regarding RCMP pensions, which is at second reading. We will add to the list any bills that are reported back from the various committees.

Tuesday, March 31 shall be an allotted day.

In reference to the upcoming justice bills that the member might be referring to when he referred to the remand legislation, he is going to have to stay tuned. We will be bringing that forward very soon. I am sure he will be very pleased with the result and will want to move very quickly once it hits the floor of the chamber.

As he knows, the government is very transparent when it comes to government expenditures, including the upcoming expenditures of the accelerated economic stimulus contained in the $3 billion under vote 35. All of that of course will be revealed to the Canadian public and to Parliament in good time as we make those investments on behalf of Canadians from coast to coast.

Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development

[Bruce Stanton, Conservative, Simcoe North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have the honour of presenting, in both official languages, the first report of the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development.

This is in relation to Bill C-5, An Act to amend the Indian Oil and Gas Act.

[The Chair, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Today, we are holding the 11^th meeting of the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Friday, February 13, 2009, the committee is going to study C-5, An Act to amend the Indian Oil and Gas Act.

This morning we are in consideration of clause-by-clause for Bill C-5.

We welcome back Karl Jacques and John Dempsey, from the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, for their help and assistance throughout the course of this morning. You know that we have certainly considered testimony from several witnesses and organizations to help us with consideration of this bill.

At this point we will proceed to consideration of clauses 1 and 2.

(Clauses 1 and 2 agreed to)

(On clause 3)

There has been an amendment circulated for clause 3. I think members have it. It's on a single page, and it's in respect of proposed subsection 28(1). This would be an addition to the bill. It would be after line 13, on page 21.

It should be noted that this amendment, which has been proposed by Monsieur Bélanger, is nearly identical to Ms. Crowder's amendment. Members, if we adopt the first motion by Mr. Bélanger, that would essentially negate the second motion by Ms. Crowder.

Ms. Crowder.

[John Dempsey]

The CPRA is a good piece of legislation. It was reviewed in our process to develop Bill C-5. The issues that were raised at this table were in relation to the assessment and reassessment process that's in the CPRA, which we have built into Bill C-5—but in the development of regulations as opposed to putting the process in the act itself.

The issue of cancelling a lease was also raised. In the CPRA they have a process in the legislation itself to cancel a lease. In Bill C-5, that'll be developed in the regulations. But it's all federal law; it will all be addressed in the development of regulations.

[Jean Crowder, NDP, Nanaimo—Cowichan, BC]

I asked the Stoney Nakoda the same question. The Government of Canada treats its own royalties differently from the way it's treating the royalties of first nations. So why wouldn't the CPRA legislation have been used as a benchmark for Bill C-5?

[John Dempsey]

On the downstream aspect of oil and gas operations, the bill is quite specific that it relates to exploration and exploitation of oil and gas only. Those downstream operations, such as refining, as you heard earlier, are important to some first nations. And there are other areas that aren't really captured by the scope of this bill.

The First Nations Commercial and Industrial Development Act was developed, in part, to give first nations the ability to go into those types of ventures, be they mining of crude bitumen, the establishment of a refinery, and so on. But the Indian Oil and Gas Act was never meant to have that broad a scope.

On the development of the regulations, we do have a process in place right now that has started with first nations. It's a continuation of the joint process that you've been hearing about and that has been going on for 10 years. We have several committees set up with the Indian Resource Council. We have several symposia planned for the next 12 months.

I think all parties who have been involved in this agree that the real work comes now, that the real work comes on the regulations. The act was merely an umbrella piece of legislation to set out some high-level authorities, but the details or processes—the details of some of the royalty issues you've been hearing about—will be worked out in the regulations.

I'll give you an example. In the bill itself right now, we've built in many processes related to royalties that aren't currently in the Indian Oil and Gas Act, such as powers around reserving a royalty, the assessment process of a royalty, and the clarification of pricing schemes, of royalty deductions, of royalty in-kind proposals, of the circumstances to waive a royalty, and of interest on a royalty. Those types of things aren't currently in the existing regime that we operate under, but we've put them into Bill C-5 so that we can make clear regulations on these areas with first nations in the future.

[Harold Albrecht, Conservative, Kitchener—Conestoga, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to all of you for being here today.

Minister Strahl, and you as well, Mr. Crowfoot, have indicated a number of times that this has been an ongoing process for roughly 10 years, and in that process the first nations that have oil-producing and gas-producing potential have been included. What we have here today is a series of agreements among the various parties to come to a resolution as to a way forward.

I wonder if you could just give me some examples as to some of the proposals that the Stoney Nakoda First Nations have made in that process over the last number of years. Can you give us some examples of some of their ideas that are incorporated into Bill C-5? I think we all understand that we never all get exactly everything we request, so I think it would be helpful for us to hear examples of how they have been accommodated.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

That would appear to me to be a really important piece of Bill C-5, to ensure the safety and, obviously, appropriate environmental protection on first nations land.

[John Dempsey]

Well abandonment is an issue right now for Indian Oil and Gas Canada. As I said, we don't have a good, strong set of laws in place under the existing regime. Under Bill C-5 we have the ability to make regulations that would give us a wide range of federal tools to ensure that companies abandon well sites properly, to ensure that they have liabilities that would go on forever just in case there are some problems with the abandonment process they've done.

[John Dempsey]

I think the environmental protection area is quite important to this bill. Right now the existing Indian Oil and Gas Act and regulations contain extremely limited requirements in the area of environmental protection, such as abandonment of wells, reclamation of wells, remediation of well sites.

We rely right now on a contractual arrangement between IOGC and oil and gas companies. The problem is that the contractual arrangement is hard to enforce, and in many cases we don't know which body is to be enforcing that, because we use a mix of provincial and federal laws in there. So what Bill C-5 does is it gives us the ability to make federal laws in the regulations that address those important areas of reclamation of well sites, remediation, the whole environmental protection side of things.

[LaVar Payne, Conservative, Medicine Hat, AB]

Okay.

My second question is on how Bill C-5 would enhance the environmental laws for drilling on first nations land for oil and gas.

[Mauril Bélanger, Liberal, Ottawa—Vanier, ON]

Mr. Chairman, as a legislator, what I'm hearing here is that I'll be expected to keep track of all the publications, of all the regulations in the Canada Gazette and in provincial gazettes, as opposed to asking the executive to come periodically--every year or two--and report to the legislator, to the Parliament of Canada, saying, “Here are the provincial regulations and the laws that we've incorporated in the application of Bill C-5, whatever it will be called, by virtue of the powers delegated to the executive by this law.”

Wouldn't it be appropriate to have a requirement for a periodic reporting to Parliament of the application of these provisions?