Bill C-38 (Historical)

Jobs, Growth and Long-term Prosperity Act

An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures

Part 1 of this enactment implements certain income tax measures and related measures proposed in the March 29, 2012 budget. Most notably, it
(a) expands the list of eligible expenses under the Medical Expense Tax Credit to include blood coagulation monitors and their disposable peripherals;
(b) introduces a temporary measure to allow certain family members to open a Registered Disability Savings Plan for an adult individual who might not be able to enter into a contract;
(c) extends, for one year, the temporary Mineral Exploration Tax Credit for flow-through share investors;
(d) allows corporations to make split and late eligible dividend designations;
(e) makes the salary of the Governor General taxable and adjusts that salary;
(f) allows a designated partner of a partnership to provide a waiver on behalf of all partners to extend the time limit for issuing a determination in respect of the partnership;
(g) amends the penalty applicable to promoters of charitable donation tax shelters who file false registration information or who fail to register a tax shelter prior to selling interests in the tax shelter;
(h) introduces a new penalty applicable to tax shelter promoters who fail to respond to a demand to file an information return or who file an information return that contains false or misleading sales information;
(i) limits the period for which a tax shelter identification number is valid to one calendar year;
(j) modifies the rules for registering certain foreign charitable organizations as qualified donees;
(k) amends the rules for determining the extent to which a charity has engaged in political activities; and
(l) provides the Minister of National Revenue with the authority to suspend the privileges, with respect to issuing tax receipts, of a registered charity or a registered Canadian amateur athletic association if the charity or association fails to report information that is required to be filed annually in an information return or devotes resources to political activities in excess of the limits set out in the Income Tax Act.
Part 1 also implements other selected income tax measures and related measures. Most notably, it
(a) amends the Income Tax Act consequential on the implementation of the Marketing Freedom for Grain Farmers Act, including the extension of the tax deferral allowed to farmers in a designated area who produce listed grains and receive deferred cash purchase tickets to all Canadian farmers who produce listed grains and receive deferred cash purchase tickets;
(b) provides authority for the Canada Revenue Agency to issue via online notice or regular mail demands to file a return; and
(c) introduces a requirement for commercial tax preparers to file income tax returns electronically.
Part 2 amends the Excise Tax Act to implement certain excise tax and goods and services tax/harmonized sales tax (GST/HST) measures proposed in the March 29, 2012 Budget. It expands the list of GST/HST zero-rated medical and assistive devices as well as the list of GST/HST zero-rated non-prescription drugs that are used to treat life-threatening diseases. It also exempts certain pharmacists’ professional services from the GST/HST, other than prescription drug dispensing services that are already zero-rated. It further allows certain literacy organizations to claim a rebate of the GST and the federal component of the HST paid on the acquisition of books to be given away for free by those organizations. It also implements legislative requirements relating to the Government of British Columbia’s decision to exit the harmonized sales tax framework. Additional amendments to that Act and related regulations in respect of foreign-based rental vehicles temporarily imported by Canadian residents provide, in certain circumstances, relief from the GST/HST, the Green Levy on fuel-inefficient vehicles and the automobile air conditioner tax. This Part further amends that Act to ensure that changes to the standardized fuel consumption test method used for the EnerGuide, as announced on February 17, 2012 by the Minister of Natural Resources, do not affect the application of the Green Levy.
Finally, Part 2 amends the Air Travellers Security Charge Act, the Excise Act, 2001 and the Excise Tax Act to provide authority for the Canada Revenue Agency to issue via online notice or regular mail demands to file a return.
Part 3 contains certain measures related to responsible resource development.
Division 1 of Part 3 enacts the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012, which establishes a new federal environmental assessment regime. Assessments are conducted in relation to projects, designated by regulations or by the Minister of the Environment, to determine whether they are likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects that fall within the legislative authority of Parliament, or that are directly linked or necessarily incidental to a federal authority’s exercise of a power or performance of a duty or function that is required for the carrying out of the project.
The Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, the National Energy Board or a review panel established by the Minister are to conduct assessments within applicable time limits. At the end of an assessment, a decision statement is to be issued to the project proponent who is required to comply with the conditions set out in it.
The enactment provides for cooperation between the federal government and other jurisdictions by enabling the delegation of an environmental assessment, the substitution of the process of another jurisdiction for an environmental assessment under the Act and the exclusion of a project from the application of the Act when there is an equivalent assessment by another jurisdiction. The enactment requires that there be opportunities for public participation during an environmental assessment, that participant funding programs and a public registry be established, and that there be follow-up programs in relation to all environmental assessments. It also provides for powers of inspection and fines.
Finally, the enactment specifies that federal authorities are not to take certain measures regarding the carrying out of projects on federal lands or outside Canada unless they determine that those projects are not likely to cause significant adverse environmental effects.
This Division also makes related amendments to the Environmental Violations Administrative Monetary Penalties Act and consequential amendments to other Acts, and repeals the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act.
Division 2 of Part 3 amends the National Energy Board Act to allow the Governor in Council to make the decision about the issuance of certificates for major pipelines. It amends the Act to establish time limits for regulatory reviews under the Act and to enhance the powers of the National Energy Board Chairperson and the Minister responsible for the Act to ensure that those reviews are conducted in a timely manner. It also amends the Act to permit the National Energy Board to exercise federal jurisdiction over navigation in respect of pipelines and power lines that cross navigable waters and it establishes an administrative monetary penalty system.
Division 3 of Part 3 amends the Canada Oil and Gas Operations Act to authorize the National Energy Board to exercise federal jurisdiction over navigation in respect of pipelines and power lines that cross navigable waters.
Division 4 of Part 3 amends the Nuclear Safety and Control Act to extend the maximum allowable term of temporary members of the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission from six months to three years. It is also amended to allow for a licence to be transferred with the consent of that Commission and it puts in place an administrative monetary penalty system.
Division 5 of Part 3 amends the Fisheries Act to focus that Act on the protection of fish that support commercial, recreational or Aboriginal fisheries and to more effectively manage those activities that pose the greatest threats to these fisheries. The amendments provide additional clarity for the authorization of serious harm to fish and of deposits of deleterious substances. The amendments allow the Minister to enter into agreements with provinces and with other bodies, provide for the control and management of aquatic invasive species, clarify and expand the powers of inspectors, and permit the Governor in Council to designate another Minister as the Minister responsible for the administration and enforcement of subsections 36(3) to (6) of the Fisheries Act for the purposes of, and in relation to, subject matters set out by order.
Division 6 of Part 3 amends the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, 1999 to provide the Minister of the Environment with the authority to renew disposal at sea permits in prescribed circumstances. It is also amended to change the publication requirements for disposal at sea permits and to provide authority to make regulations respecting time limits for their issuance and renewal.
Division 7 of Part 3 amends the Species at Risk Act to allow for the issuance of authorizations with a longer term, to clarify the authority to renew the authorizations and to make compliance with conditions of permits enforceable. The Act is also amended to provide authority to make regulations respecting time limits for the issuance and renewal of permits under the Act. Furthermore, section 77 is amended to ensure that the National Energy Board will be able to issue a certificate when required to do so by the Governor in Council under subsection 54(1) of the National Energy Board Act.
Part 4 enacts and amends several Acts in order to implement various measures.
Division 1 of Part 4 amends a number of Acts to eliminate the requirement for the Auditor General of Canada to undertake annual financial audits of certain entities and to assess the performance reports of two agencies. This Division also eliminates other related obligations.
Division 2 of Part 4 amends the Trust and Loan Companies Act, the Bank Act and the Cooperative Credit Associations Act to prohibit the issuance of life annuity-like products.
Division 3 of Part 4 provides that PPP Canada Inc. is an agent of Her Majesty for purposes limited to its mandated activities at the federal level, including the provision of advice to federal departments and Crown corporations on public-private partnership projects.
Division 4 of Part 4 amends the Northwest Territories Act, the Nunavut Act and the Yukon Act to provide the authority for the Governor in Council to set, on the recommendation of the Minister of Finance, the maximum amount of territorial borrowings and to make regulations in relation to those maximum amounts, including what constitutes borrowing, the relevant entities and the valuation of the borrowings.
Division 5 of Part 4 amends the Financial Administration Act to modify, for parent Crown corporations, the period to which their quarterly financial reports relate, so that it is aligned with their financial year, and to include in the place of certain annual tabling requirements related to the business and activities of parent Crown corporations a requirement to make public consolidated quarterly reports on their business and activities. It also amends the Alternative Fuels Act and the Public Service Employment Act to eliminate certain reporting requirements.
Division 6 of Part 4 amends the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development Act to establish the Social Security Tribunal and to add provisions authorizing the electronic administration or enforcement of programs, legislation, activities or policies. It also amends the Canada Pension Plan, the Old Age Security Act and the Employment Insurance Act so that appeals from decisions made under those Acts will be heard by the Social Security Tribunal. Finally, it provides for transitional provisions and makes consequential amendments to other Acts.
Division 7 of Part 4 amends the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development Act to add provisions relating to the protection of personal information obtained in the course of administering or enforcing the Canada Pension Plan and the Old Age Security Act and repeals provisions in the Canada Pension Plan and the Old Age Security Act that are substantially the same as those that are added to the Human Resources and Skills Development Act.
Division 8 of Part 4 amends the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development Act to add provisions relating to the social insurance registers and Social Insurance Numbers. It also amends the Canada Pension Plan in relation to Social Insurance Numbers and the Employment Insurance Act to repeal certain provisions relating to the social insurance registers and Social Insurance Numbers and to maintain the power to charge the costs of those registers to the Employment Insurance Operating Account.
Division 9 of Part 4 amends the Parks Canada Agency Act to provide that the Agency may enter into agreements with other ministers or bodies to assist in the administration and enforcement of legislation in places outside national parks, national historic sites, national marine conservation areas and other protected heritage areas if considerations of geography make it impractical for the other minister or body to administer and enforce that legislation in those places. It also amends that Act to provide that the Chief Executive Officer is to report to the Minister of the Environment under section 31 of that Act every five years. It amends that Act to remove the requirements for annual corporate plans, annual reports and annual audits, and amends that Act, the Canada National Parks Act and the Canada National Marine Conservation Areas Act to provide that that Minister is to review management plans for national parks, national historic sites, national marine conservation areas and other protected heritage areas at least every 10 years and is to have any amendments to a plan tabled in Parliament.
Division 10 of Part 4 amends the Trust and Loan Companies Act, the Bank Act and the Insurance Companies Act in order to allow public sector investment pools that satisfy certain criteria, including pursuing commercial objectives, to directly invest in a Canadian financial institution, subject to approval by the Minister of Finance.
Division 11 of Part 4 amends the National Housing Act, the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation Act and the Supporting Vulnerable Seniors and Strengthening Canada’s Economy Act to enhance the governance and oversight framework of the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation.
This Division also amends the National Housing Act to establish a registry for institutions that issue covered bonds and for covered bond programs and to provide for the protection of covered bond contracts and covered bond collateral in the event of an issuer’s bankruptcy or insolvency. It also makes amendments to the Trust and Loan Companies Act, the Bank Act, the Insurance Companies Act and the Cooperative Credit Associations Act to prohibit institutions from issuing covered bonds except within the framework established under the National Housing Act. Finally, it includes a coordinating amendment to the Supporting Vulnerable Seniors and Strengthening Canada’s Economy Act.
Division 12 of Part 4 implements the Framework Agreement on Integrated Cross-Border Maritime Law Enforcement Operations between the Government of Canada and the Government of the United States of America signed on May 26, 2009.
Division 13 of Part 4 amends the Bretton Woods and Related Agreements Act to reflect an increase in Canada’s quota subscription, as related to the ratification of the 2010 Quota and Governance reform resolution of the Board of Governors of the International Monetary Fund, and to align the timing of the annual report under that Act to correspond to that of the annual report under the Official Development Assistance Accountability Act.
Division 14 of Part 4 amends the Canada Health Act so that members of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police are included in the definition of “insured person”.
Division 15 of Part 4 amends the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act to
(a) remove the office of the Inspector General;
(b) require the Security Intelligence Review Committee to submit to the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness a certificate on the Director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service’s annual report; and
(c) increase the information on the Service’s activities to be provided by that Committee to that Minister.
Division 16 of Part 4 amends the Currency Act to clarify certain provisions that relate to the calling in and the redemption of coins.
Division 17 of Part 4 amends the Federal-Provincial Fiscal Arrangements Act in order to implement the total transfer protection for the 2012-2013 fiscal year and to give effect to certain elements of major transfer renewal that were announced by the Minister of Finance on December 19, 2011. It also makes certain administrative amendments to that Act and to the Canada Health Act.
Division 18 of Part 4 amends the Fisheries Act to authorize the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans to allocate fish for the purpose of financing scientific and fisheries management activities in the context of joint project agreements.
Division 19 of Part 4 amends the Food and Drugs Act to give the Minister of Health the power to establish a list that sets out prescription drugs or classes of prescription drugs and to provide that the list may be incorporated by reference. It also gives the Minister the power to issue marketing authorizations that exempt a food, or an advertisement with respect to a food, from certain provisions of the Act. The division also provides that a regulation with respect to a food and a marketing authorization may incorporate by reference any document. It also makes consequential amendments to other Acts.
Division 20 of Part 4 amends the Government Employees Compensation Act to allow prescribed entities to be subrogated to the rights of employees to make claims against third parties.
Division 21 of Part 4 amends the International Development Research Centre Act to reduce the maximum number of governors of the Centre to 14, and to consequently change other rules about the number of governors.
Division 22 of Part 4 amends Part I of the Canada Labour Code to require the parties to a collective agreement to file a copy of it with the Minister of Labour, subject to the regulations, as a condition for it to come into force. It amends Part III of that Act to require employers that provide benefits to their employees under long-term disability plans to insure those plans, subject to certain exceptions. The Division also amends that Part to create an offence and to increase maximum fines for offences under that Part.
Division 23 of Part 4 repeals the Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act.
Division 24 of Part 4 amends the Old Age Security Act to provide the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development with the authority to waive the requirement for an application for Old Age Security benefits for many eligible seniors, to gradually increase the age of eligibility for the Old Age Security Pension, the Guaranteed Income Supplement, the Allowance and the Allowance for the Survivor and to allow individuals to voluntarily defer their Old Age Security Pension up to five years past the age of eligibility, in exchange for a higher, actuarially adjusted, pension.
Division 25 of Part 4 dissolves the Public Appointments Commission and its secretariat.
Division 26 of Part 4 amends the Seeds Act to give the President of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency the power to issue licences to persons authorizing them to perform activities related to controlling or assuring the quality of seeds or seed crops.
Division 27 of Part 4 amends the Statutory Instruments Act to remove the distribution requirements for the Canada Gazette.
Division 28 of Part 4 amends the Investment Canada Act in order to authorize the Minister of Industry to communicate or disclose certain information relating to investments and to accept security in order to promote compliance with undertakings.
Division 29 of Part 4 amends the Customs Act to allow the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness to designate a portion of a roadway or other access way that leads to a customs office and that is used by persons arriving in Canada and by persons travelling within Canada as a mixed-traffic corridor. All persons who are travelling in a mixed-traffic corridor must present themselves to a border services officer and state whether they are arriving from a location outside or within Canada.
Division 30 of Part 4 gives retroactive effect to subsections 39(2) and (3) of the Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985.
Division 31 of Part 4 amends the Railway Safety Act to limit the apportionment of costs to a road authority when a grant has been made under section 12 of that Act.
Division 32 of Part 4 amends the Canadian International Trade Tribunal Act to replace the two Vice-chairperson positions with two permanent member positions.
Division 33 of Part 4 repeals the International Centre for Human Rights and Democratic Development Act and authorizes the closing out of the affairs of the Centre established by that Act.
Division 34 of Part 4 amends the Health of Animals Act to allow the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food to declare certain areas to be control zones in respect of a disease or toxic substance. The enactment also grants the Minister certain powers, including the power to make regulations prohibiting the movement of persons, animals or things in the control zones for the purpose of eliminating a disease or toxic substance or controlling its spread and the power to impose conditions on the movement of animals or things in those zones.
Division 35 of Part 4 amends the Canada School of Public Service Act to abolish the Board of Governors of the Canada School of Public Service and to place certain responsibilities on the Minister designated for the purposes of the Act and on the President of the School.
Division 36 of Part 4 amends the Bank Act by adding a preamble to it.
Division 37 of Part 4 amends the Corrections and Conditional Release Act to eliminate the requirement of a hearing for certain reviews.
Division 38 of Part 4 amends the Coasting Trade Act to add seismic activities to the list of exceptions to the prohibition against foreign ships and non-duty paid ships engaging in the coasting trade.
Division 39 of Part 4 amends the Status of the Artist Act to dissolve the Canadian Artists and Producers Professional Relations Tribunal and transfer its powers and duties to the Canada Industrial Relations Board.
Division 40 of Part 4 amends the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy Act to give the Round Table the power to sell or otherwise dispose of its assets and satisfy its debts and liabilities and to give the Minister of the Environment the power to direct the Round Table in respect of the exercise of some of its powers. The Division provides for the repeal of the Act and makes consequential amendments to other acts.
Division 41 of Part 4 amends the Telecommunications Act to change the rules relating to foreign ownership of Canadian carriers eligible to operate as telecommunications common carriers and to permit the recovery of costs associated with the administration and enforcement of the national do not call list.
Division 42 of Part 4 amends the Employment Equity Act to remove the requirements that are specific to the Federal Contractors Program for Employment Equity.
Division 43 of Part 4 amends the Employment Insurance Act to permit a person’s benefits to be determined by reference to their highest earnings in a given number of weeks, to permit regulations to be made respecting what constitutes suitable employment, to remove the requirement that a consent to deduction be in writing, to provide a limitation period within which certain repayments of overpayments need to be deducted and paid and to clarify the provisions respecting the refund of premiums to self-employed persons. It also amends that Act to modify the Employment Insurance premium rate-setting mechanism, including requiring that the rate be set on a seven-year break-even basis once the Employment Insurance Operating Account returns to balance. The Division makes consequential amendments to the Canada Employment Insurance Financing Board Act.
Division 44 of Part 4 amends the Customs Tariff to make certain imported fuels duty-free and to increase the travellers’ exemption thresholds.
Division 45 of Part 4 amends the Canada Marine Act to require provisions of a port authority’s letters patent relating to limits on the authority’s power to borrow money to be recommended by the Minister of Transport and the Minister of Finance before they are approved by the Governor in Council.
Division 46 of Part 4 amends the First Nations Land Management Act to implement changes made to the Framework Agreement on First Nation Land Management, including changes relating to the description of land that is to be subject to a land code, and to provide for the coming into force of land codes and the development by First Nations of environmental protection regimes.
Division 47 of Part 4 amends the Canada Travelling Exhibitions Indemnification Act to increase the maximum indemnity in respect of individual travelling exhibitions, as well as the maximum indemnity in respect of all travelling exhibitions.
Division 48 of Part 4 amends the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority Act to provide that the chief executive officer of the Authority is appointed by the Governor in Council and that an employee may not replace the chief executive officer for more than 90 days without the Governor in Council’s approval.
Division 49 of Part 4 amends the First Nations Fiscal and Statistical Management Act to repeal provisions related to the First Nations Statistical Institute and amends that Act and other Acts to remove any reference to that Institute. It authorizes the Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development to close out the Institute’s affairs.
Division 50 of Part 4 amends the Canadian Forces Members and Veterans Re-establishment and Compensation Act to provide for the payment or reimbursement of fees for career transition services for veterans or their survivors.
Division 51 of Part 4 amends the Department of Human Resources and Skills Development Act to add powers, duties and functions that are substantially the same as those conferred by the Department of Social Development Act. It repeals the Department of Social Development Act and, in doing so, eliminates the National Council of Welfare.
Division 52 of Part 4 amends the Wage Earner Protection Program Act in order to correct the English version of the definition “eligible wages”.
Division 53 of Part 4 repeals the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act.
Division 54 of Part 4 amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act and the Budget Implementation Act, 2008 to provide for the termination of certain applications for permanent residence that were made before February 27, 2008. This Division also amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to, among other things, authorize the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration to give instructions establishing and governing classes of permanent residents as part of the economic class and to provide that the User Fees Act does not apply in respect of fees set by those instructions. Furthermore, this Division amends the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act to allow for the retrospective application of certain regulations and certain instructions given by the Minister, if those regulations and instructions so provide, and to authorize regulations to be made respecting requirements imposed on employers in relation to authorizations to work in Canada.
Division 55 of Part 4 enacts the Shared Services Canada Act to establish Shared Services Canada to provide certain administrative services specified by the Governor in Council. The Act provides for the Governor in Council to designate a minister to preside over Shared Services Canada.
Division 56 of Part 4 amends the Assisted Human Reproduction Act to respond to the Supreme Court of Canada decision in Reference re Assisted Human Reproduction Act that was rendered in 2010, including by repealing the provisions that were found to be unconstitutional and abolishing the Assisted Human Reproduction Agency of Canada.

[Jim Stanford]

It is an enormous shortage of jobs, not a lack of workers and not a lack of work ethic, that explains the decline in the employment rate pictured in the graph and the challenges in our households and communities.

Let me conclude by summarizing the relevance of this analysis for Bill C-38.

With chronic underutilization of our existing supply, policies that are aimed at compelling more labour force participation, such as the OAS deferral and the new rules cutting and restructuring EI benefits, are questionable. Those policies should be designed not to compel more labour supply but rather to support Canadian families in an era where there's a chronic shortage of jobs that dominates the outlook for our labour market moving forward.

Thank you for your attention. I look forward to our discussion.

[Jim Stanford, Economist, Canadian Auto Workers Union]

Thank you, Mr. Rajotte and members of the committee, for the opportunity to appear with you. I will focus my introductory remarks on the condition of Canada's overall labour market. In particular, I will argue that the labour market is characterized, and will continue to be characterized, by a condition of chronic excess supply. This contrasts with the oft-made claim that Canada is experiencing or is about to experience a major shortage of labour.

This issue is an important context for several of the measures that you are contemplating in Bill C-38, including the proposal to defer eligibility for old age security payments by two years and the plan to reduce and restructure employment insurance benefits, as well as measures to restructure immigration and migrant labour policies.

All of those are bundled, of course, into one piece of legislation. At the risk of repeating what just happened, I should add my organization's view to the record that we think it's inappropriate to consider measures that are very important, very long lasting, such as changes to OAS and EI programs, within the framework of an omnibus bill.

The issue of whether the labour market experiences excess supply or short supply is also very relevant to a wide range of economic policies. It's very common to use the official unemployment rate as an all-purpose indicator of the general supply/demand balance in the labour market. That official rate currently stands at 7.3%, which might not seem too bad, depending on your context. However, that rate is not an accurate indicator of true labour market balance, especially during a recession or in the period after a recession.

To qualify as officially unemployed for purposes of this measure, an individual must not only be working, but also actively seeking work. If you stop actively seeking work—according to the definition of that term by Statistics Canada—you disappear from the labour force, and hence from the unemployment statistics. This is an arbitrary hurdle that skews the resulting measure of supply/demand balance, especially when job searches may be inhibited by the view that there aren't positions to apply for. Perhaps I could mention that Albert Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over again, expecting a different result. In that case, if you've applied for 50 jobs and didn't even get a callback, applying for the 51st might be considered irrational.

It must be noted in this context that most unemployed Canadians do not receive EI benefits, so the idea that people are just going through the motions of looking for work in order to remain qualified for EI cannot explain this result.

I think that at this point in the business cycle, a better measure of labour market balance is the flip side of the unemployment rate, what we call the employment rate. It steps back from the issue of whether someone is actively seeking work and just asks if they are employed in any type of job.

A handout has gone around, and the graph at the top of that handout illustrates the trend in the employment rate in recent years. As you see, the employment rate fell dramatically during the recession by 2.5% of the working-age population. Since then, it has rebounded by only 0.6%. In other words, only one-fifth of the damage that was done to the labour market by the recession has been repaired. Indeed, in the labour market, it still feels like a recession, even though economists say technically we're in a recovery.

The last two months of labour market data were good. You'll see the last two points on that graph show a nice rebound, and that's very positive. Even with that, we're only back to where we were 16 months ago. In that regard, our employment recovery has stalled. I think it's worth noting that between one in four and one in three of the net new jobs created in Canada between the end of 2007 and the end of 2011 went to temporary foreign migrants. That program is playing a larger and larger role in meeting the new jobs being created.

How do we reconcile that graph with the claim that we have won back all the jobs that were lost in the recession?

This measure, as we should, takes into account ongoing population growth. Saying that we're back to the absolute number of jobs we had in the fall of 2008 is a bit irrelevant when we have to create hundreds of thousands of net new jobs each year to keep up with population growth in the four years since then.

We think a better measure of the actual mass of unemployment would take the non-participation of discouraged Canadians into account, and the table at the bottom of my handout does that. We add to the official unemployment tally, which is around 1.4 million as of April, about 300,000, representing the withdrawal from the labour market by many Canadians, as well as Canadians who are working involuntarily in part-time positions or who have a job but no hours or are waiting for the next shift.

By that measure, I estimate that true unemployment in Canada is about 2.3 million Canadians, or about 12% of the adjusted labour force.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I call this 66th meeting of the Standing Committee on Finance back to order. We are continuing our discussion of Bill C-38.

We want to thank our guests for coming in today and for joining us by video conference. We have four witnesses in this panel.

First of all, from the Canadian Auto Workers Union, we have economist Jim Stanford; from the Retail Council of Canada, we have Madame Diane Brisebois, the president and CEO; and Karen Proud, as well, from that same organization; by video conference, we have Professor Marjorie Griffin Cohen—she joins us from Simon Fraser University—and via video conference from Toronto, we have from Campaign 2000, national coordinator, Laurel Rothman.

Thank you all for being with us. Each of you has up to five minutes for an opening statement, and then we'll have questions from members.

We'll start with Mr. Stanford and proceed in the order I outlined.

Mr. Stanford, please.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

I will tell you that I have lived in Fort McMurray for 47 years. We have the lowest doctor-to-patient ratio in the OECD. Do you know that? I haven't had a family doctor for 20 years. When I need to see a doctor, I come to Ottawa. Why? Because I can see a doctor here.

Do you realize that Bill C-38, for the first time in our history, allows us to have the opportunity to fast-track a doctor who is going to go to a rural community? Do any of you realize that?

Could you comment on that, Mr. Lee?

Opposition Motion—Employment Insurance

[Chris Charlton, NDP, Hamilton Mountain, ON]

moved:

That this House call on the Conservative government to abandon plans to further restrict access to Employment Insurance for Canadian workers who have followed the rules and who will now be forced to choose between taking a pay cut of up to 30% or losing their Employment Insurance benefits.

Madam Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the member for Charlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles.

I am pleased to move, on behalf of the entire NDP caucus, a motion calling on the Conservative government to abandon its reckless changes to Canada's employment insurance system.

First and foremost, employment insurance must be about providing a safety net for workers. Government ministers and Conservative MPs keep saying that jobs are not being filled because the unemployed do not want to work, but Statistics Canada pointed out just last week that there were almost six unemployed workers for every reported job vacancy in Canada. In other words, despite its rhetoric, the Conservative government's record on job creation has been an abject failure.

Therefore, yes, this is the time that workers need to draw on the employment insurance that they paid into all of their working lives. However, instead of helping workers to access what is rightfully theirs, the minister responsible for the program hurls insults by saying, “We do not want to make it lucrative for them to stay home and get paid for it”. It is outrageous. Workers need EI, not so they can stay at home but so they can keep their homes.

Even before these ill-advised changes, only 40% of unemployed Canadians were able to access EI benefits, and those who do bring home a maximum of 55% of their former wages. Unemployed workers can assure the minister that EI is not lucrative.

What then motivated this last round of EI reforms? Toronto Star columnist, Thomas Walkom, hit the nail squarely on the head when he blamed the changes on “bone-headed ideology and contempt”. The Conservatives have continually demonstrated their hatred of Canada's social safety net, including employment insurance, and the disdain starts right at the top.

This is what the Prime Minister told the American Council for National Policy in 1997. He said:

In terms of the unemployed, of which we have over a million-and-a-half, don't feel particularly bad for many of these people. They don't feel bad about it themselves, as long as they're receiving generous social assistance and unemployment insurance.

He also derided Atlantic Canadians for using social services, saying in 2002:

I think in Atlantic Canada, because of what happened in the decades following Confederation, there is a culture of defeat that we have to overcome.... Atlantic Canada's culture of defeat will be hard to overcome as long as Atlantic Canada is actually physically trailing the rest of the country.

As Walkom rightly points out, “The contempt is that of comfortable, well-heeled politicians who, deep down, assume that those unfortunate enough to have lost their jobs lack moral fibre”. However, the issue is not that Canadians do not want to work. The issue is that there are no jobs available in many parts of our country. Yes, that means that Canadians will try to access employment insurance. It is, after all, a program that was designed to help the jobless get by while they search for work.

As things stand right now, regular EI covers up to 55% of former salary to a maximum of $485 a week for up to 45 weeks. Last year, 850,000 people relied on the program, including thousands in my hometown of Hamilton where the manufacturing sector has been particularly hard hit. If one were to ask people who have tried to access employment insurance, they would be the first to point out that the system does need reform. The reforms just are not in the direction that the government is moving. We need to enhance, not restrict, access to EI for Canadians who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own.

As it stands now, less than half of the unemployed qualify for EI benefits. Only 40% of men collect and an even lower 32% of women get any support from EI. The reason is that the rules are biased against part-time, temporary, self-employed and women workers, yet all workers pay into the system.

The conversation we should be having in this chamber is about how we enhance access to the benefits that employees and employers paid for. It is only the workers and the employers who contribute to the EI system. There is not a dime of the government's money in the pot and yet successive Liberal and Conservative governments have raided the surpluses in the EI fund to the tune of $57 billion. They have treated it as their own cash cow to fund everything from debt reduction to new government programs and now it has the audacity to suggest that the program is too lucrative for workers and that things need to change. It is completely outrageous.

If we are going to change the system at all, we should live up to the commitments made by the motion on EI reform that I tabled here in the last Parliament, which, I might add, was passed by the House of Commons. That motion called for the elimination of the two-week waiting period, a lower qualifying period that was consistent across our country, an increase in the replacement wage to 60%, improved funding for training and a mechanism for allowing the self-employed to participate in the program.

Three years later, the government has still only acted on the will of Parliament with respect to one of those proposals, and that is making EI available to the self-employed. All other tinkering the Conservatives have done with respect to the EI system has been counter to the spirit of my motion and has been at the expense rather than to the benefit of hard-working Canadians.

We need to just look at the changes resulting from the most recent Conservative budget. Budget 2012 announced the Conservative government's intention to introduce legislation “to strengthen and clarify what is required of claimants who are receiving regular EI benefits and are looking for work”. Instead, the Trojan Horse bill, Bill C-38, gave the Minister of Human Resources and Skills Development the power to create regulations concerning what constitutes suitable employment and reasonable and customary efforts to find employment.

When asked what the regulations would look like, the minister responded, “We haven't announced those details yet. We want to make sure the legislation gets through first”. Really. Do the Conservatives want us to buy a pig in a poke? That will not happen and the more details we learn, the more we know just how misguided the government's approach has become.

Under the new scheme, frequent EI claimants will no longer be able to hold out for something akin to their former jobs at roughly the same wage. Instead, they will need to accept similar work at as little as 80% of their previous wage during the first seven weeks of benefits, yet we do not know what “similar” means. After that, they must take any work they are qualified to perform for as little as 70% of what they used to make. Less frequent users will fare marginally better. They can hold out for jobs within their usual occupation at 90% of their former wage for 18 weeks. After that, they, too, must accept similar jobs at 80% of their previous wage.

Obviously this has nothing to do with connecting workers with suitable jobs. This is all about driving down wages. The Conservatives love free markets unless, of course, it is a labour market. One has to wonder though for whom they are doing this.

Yes, these changes will help their friends in the tar sands hire temporary foreign workers who can now be paid 15% less than the going regional wage. At the Standing Committee on Human Resources, Skills and Social Development, where we have been studying the projected shortages of skilled workers in Canada, many employers have actually come forward to tell us that forcing workers in seasonal industries to do other work during the off season will do permanent harm to their businesses and, indeed, to their entire regions. That, of course, is due to out-migration.

If the fisherman's helpers, forestry workers or farmhands are forced during the respective off-season to take on a job they do not like and that pays less, they will be more inclined to head to western Canada. That leaves local businesses high and dry.

When we combine that attack on rural Canada with the fact that stripping Canadians of their employment insurance will lead to an increased reliance on provincial social support systems, it is no wonder that premiers from across the country are crying foul. Despite the fact that it is their provincial budgets and their provincial taxpayers who will pay the price for these ill-conceived changes to Canada's EI system, none of them were consulted before the changes were announced.

As an editorial in the Saskatoon StarPheonix put it:

This is clearly an issue that needs a national debate--one we were robbed of when the government stuffed the changes into its omnibus bill.

That is why the New Democrats have brought this motion to the floor of the House today. We do need a national debate on the changes to Canada's employment insurance system and the people who pay for that system and who use it must have a say in its future. Until then, we must change course and abandon all plans to further restrict access to employment insurance for Canadian workers.

Human Rights

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Madam Speaker, I rise today to present two petitions. The first relates to human rights, particularly in China.

This petition is from members of the public in Mississauga, Toronto and the vicinity who are offended by the continued persecution of people practising Falun Dafa or Falun Gong within China.

The petitioners call on the Government of Canada and the Minister of Foreign Affairs to impress upon the Chinese government the importance of human rights to Canada.

The petition is timely as we are creating more investment opportunities for China without environmental reviews as a driving force behind Bill C-38. It is important that we give this petition attention.

[Roxanne Dubois, National Chairperson, Canadian Federation of Students]

Thanks to the committee for the opportunity to make the voice of students in Canada heard here today.

The Canadian Federation of Students represents more than half a million students from colleges and universities across Canada. It is Canada's largest and oldest national students union.

The right to education at all levels is enshrined in international law and is prescribed by existing moral and social imperatives of Canadian society. Our public post-secondary education system was built with public dollars and, implicitly, must be accessible to all citizens of Canada, just like health care is. However, Canada's college and university system continues to operate without a national framework and is increasingly cost-prohibitive. The federal budget bill, despite its size and scope, fails to implement a strategy to address rising tuition fees, skyrocketing student debt, and youth unemployment. However, Bill C-38 does many other things, such as threaten our generation's prospects for job and retirement security and seek to reduce environmental regulations.

Due to its size and scope, Bill C-38 overreaches and will contribute to public cynicism. Five minutes is insufficient to review 425 pages and the nearly 70 acts being amended, repealed, or introduced. I cannot but conclude that the government's objective must be to limit the Canadian public from fully assessing the omnibus bill.

I would be doing a complete disservice to my organization's members and the Canadian public if I did not use this time to implore each of you on the government side to abandon this hypocritical tactic of forcing through legislation en masse.

To use the Prime Minister's own words during his time in opposition:

...in the interest of democracy I ask: How can members represent their constituents on these various areas when they are forced to vote in a block of such legislation

Students today are facing a very precarious labour market. With rising student debt, caused mainly by tuition fee increases, job opportunities are even scarcer because of the government's decision to eliminate Service Canada centres for youth and student positions in the public service. In addition, government investment to improve access to education has slowed significantly. At a time when over 70% of new jobs require some form of post-secondary education, the government has to substantially increase its investment in the Canada Student Grants Program to reduce student debt and help graduates in the labour market.

Making matters worse for students and youth, Bill C-38 proposes changes to Canada's old age security program, the temporary foreign worker program, and employment insurance, all at once. Raising the benefits eligibility age of OAS from 65 to 67, reducing the wages of workers, and eroding the retirement prospects of future generations is itself a solution without a problem and requires at least further study by committee.

If the government is concerned about the well-being of young people and truly wants to protect our future, then cuts to OAS should be taken off the table. Young people in Canada have all of our working years ahead of us. If anything, giving young people a chance to make a decent living requires increased access to education and training and a more robust OAS program.

The federal government's lack of vision with respect to tuition fees comes at a significant cost to our economy in the form of lost economic opportunities. For every Canadian who is denied access to post-secondary education, the costs of health care, employment insurance, social assistance and public safety all grow, and the tax base shrinks.

The OECD estimates that the economic benefit of any investment in post-secondary education comes to $1.63 for every dollar spent by government. If the government is serious and genuinely wants the economy to grow, it should give serious consideration to rejecting this bill and investing in post-secondary education.

Last, when it comes to environmental regulations, Bill C-38 erodes the government's ability to hold companies accountable for their practices. The next generation will inherit the environmental issues to come. We will be saddled with the effects of climate change, unchecked resource development, and potentially irreversible damage to Canada's wildlife. Environmental sustainability is top of mind for today's youth but appears to be a governmental afterthought. The callous disregard for the environment in Bill C-38 is completely irresponsible.

We believe in the strongest of terms that the alterations to OAS, GIS, and EI ought to be removed from Bill C-38, studied by their relevant committees, and voted on separately from the budget bill. We hold the same sentiments with respect to the Fisheries Act, the Navigable Waters Protection Act, the National Energy Board Act, the Species at Risk Act, the Parks Canada Agency Act, the Canadian Oil and Gas Operations Act, the Nuclear Safety and Control Act, the Seeds Act, the Fair Wages and Hours of Labour Act, the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy Act, the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, etc.

Again, I thank you for the opportunity to make this presentation.

I look forward to your questions.

[Patrick Grady]

Thus we support the immigration policy measures in part 4 of Bill C-38.

Having said that, I would like to go on and say that more definitely needs to be done to limit the numbers of immigrants, since the large number is what's causing the deterioration in performance. It's not only a selection problem; it's very difficult to select from such large numbers. The government still proposes to bring in 250,000 new immigrants a year and a couple of hundred thousand temporary workers, and it's actually increasing the number of parents and grandparents allowed in at a great fiscal cost.

I estimate it would cost around $6 billion per year if you took the parents and grandparents brought in since 1987. If you took in the 165,000 in the backlog and the ones expected to apply by the year 2020, that would add another $6 billion, making the annual cost about $12 billion.

It doesn't look as though much is being done to resolve that problem.

[The Chair, Conservative, James Rajotte]

I call this meeting to order. This is the 66th meeting of the Standing Committee on Finance.

The orders of the day, pursuant to the order of reference of Monday, May 14, 2012, are continuing our study of Bill C-38, an act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012, and other measures.

Colleagues, we have with us two panels here this morning.

In the first panel, we have six presenters.

We have Mr. Patrick Grady, an economist with Global Economics; we have Mr. Richard Kurland, who is a policy analyst and attorney; we have Mr. Ian Lee, professor at the Sprott School of Business, at Carleton University; we have Mr. Lorne Waldman with us as well; representing the Canadian Federation of Students, we have Madame Roxanne Dubois, national chairperson; and from Oxfam Canada, we have Mark Fried, the policy coordinator.

Welcome to all of you. Thank you for being with us. You each have up to five minutes maximum for an opening statement.

We will start with Mr. Grady and work our way down the line.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

If I may, then, Mr. Kneen, regarding the changes proposed here today, are we going to be in a position to adequately protect the environment against any mishaps that may happen regarding mining? I'm just wondering what should be addressed in Bill C-38 to adequately protect the environment when it comes to the inevitable accidents that are going to happen in mining?

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And thank you, witnesses, for staying at a fairly late hour. I appreciate that you're still here.

A pipeline has spilled about 22,000 barrels of oil into the Alberta muskeg. It's a pretty significant environmental disaster. It's certainly going to have an impact on streams and wildlife, and fisheries in particular. The way the Fisheries Act is being modified by this bill talks about “serious harm” and “permanent harm”. I wonder if either Mr. Kneen or Mr. Hazell would like to speak.

This spill—presumably even one as large as this, one of the largest in North American history and one that is going to have an incredible impact—might very well be defined as “temporary” and not really subject to the provisions of the bill. Can we look forward to this kind of environmental disaster wreaking havoc on our fisheries with the way the act is going to be modified under Bill C-38?

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Well said. Thank you.

In a way, you've summarized why our finance minister talks about the importance of one project, one review. Even though environmental assessment is not at the top of his to-do list, he understands, like you, that it's all about jobs and it's all about economic growth. The bottom line is that duplications, delays, and all these types of impediments in the current process are affecting taxpayers and jobs in our country.

As a more general question, I want to address something one of the witnesses yesterday talked about, the BNA Act and the environment. I want to point out that the word “environment” doesn't appear in the BNA Act, but the courts have found subsequently that responsibility for the environment should be shared between federal and provincial governments.

Do you agree that federal, provincial, and territorial governments should share, not duplicate, responsibility for environmental assessments? Would you agree that Bill C-38, part 3, emphasizes sharing, and not the duplication of responsibility?

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Mr. Fisher, Mr. Thomas, and Mr. Anderson, for the sake of clarity, I'd like to clarify something. With all due respect, I studied sustainable landscape management at UBC. I made many visits to the valley and to Chilliwack and other valley towns. I studied in that environment, and I want to clarify the basic science of surface hydrology and the role of riparian corridors, because I've heard a lot about farmers' ditches for the past couple of months.

Ditches act as first-order streams, whether they're man-made or natural. First-order streams flow into second order and they flow into third order, and eventually they reach deltas at the ocean. If you look at a satellite picture of the Fraser delta, you'll see massive siltation at the outlet of the delta.

Now, people will ask, “So what?” Well, any runoff that goes into those ditches increases siltation in a river, and the silts reduce the oxygen in that river. The reduction of oxygen reduces the capacity of a river to carry aquatic life—plain and simple. That's the plain science of surface hydrology.

The Fisheries Act leads to the protection of those riparian corridors because it recognizes that surface runoff reduces a river's capacity to carry life and fish. Mitigation such as hedgerows—or gravels, as you mentioned—helps the process, but if you remove these acts and the incentive to protect fish, some farmers will cut costs, and they will not take on the extra costs to do the mitigation measures. So this act is actually protecting the whole system.

A farmer knows their land well. I wouldn't want to say they don't. But it's a system. They're part of a system. A lot of farmers want to use all of their cultivable land. It makes economic sense. You want to increase the productivity of your land, but by doing hedgerows and by taking mitigation measures, you're protecting fish, which protects that industry.

Now, that's science. It's not manipulation, such as the government is doing in using language and perceptions to turn people against science. So I'd just like that clarified.

My question is actually for Mr. Hazell. Changes in Bill C-38 mean that cabinet now can overrule the National Energy Board's decision. Do you think the decision-making should be based on science, or is allowing big resource developments to be decided on a political whim a good idea?

[Anne Minh-Thu Quach, NDP, Beauharnois—Salaberry, QC]

Thank you for your passionate answer.

I would also like to know whether you think Bill C-38 takes into account cumulative effects. If not, why is it important to take into consideration the cumulative effects of large projects?

[Jamie Kneen, Communications Coordinator, MiningWatch Canada]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you for the invitation.

I am here today as a representative of MiningWatch Canada, a national non-governmental organization—not a charity—and as co-chair of the environmental planning and assessment caucus of the Canadian Environmental Network, which brings together some 60 groups and environmental assessment experts from across the country.

I'm here to urge you to ensure that the environmental provisions of Bill C-38 are given proper consultation and debate.

Part 3 of C-38, with which we are concerned today, is seriously flawed, and in our view, to allow it to proceed without very major amendment would be irresponsible. With all due respect to the experience and knowledge of this committee, there is simply no way of adequately addressing part 3 as part of C-38. These provisions must be separated and debated on their own, and if need be, removed and resubmitted to a new legislative process.

The government is arguing that the new Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, CEAA 2012, and related measures must be passed as part of the budget process, because they are urgently required to protect and promote investment and development.

The urgency is clearly manufactured. The existing Canadian Environmental Assessment Act was referred for review by Parliament two years ago. The government did nothing for 16 months, and it had actually dropped efforts by the minister's own regulatory advisory committee, as well as the caucus, to prepare for the review going back several years before that.

Just as importantly, these measures are more likely to exacerbate uncertainty and delay, which will ultimately put development projects at risk and drive away investment.

I would like to focus on three key problems in the new act: the abdication of federal responsibility over the environment; the abandonment of the principles of sustainable development and the integration of those principles into decision-making; and the serious diminution of public participation and the opportunity to fulfill government's obligations towards aboriginal peoples. I am not here to speak for aboriginal peoples, and I will not focus extensively on those issues, but both MiningWatch and the caucus have serious concerns in this area.

In place of a positive assertion of a federal role in EA, the act explicitly limits federal authority to specific regulatory jurisdiction, as in proposed paragraph 5(1)(a). This flies in the face of the Supreme Court's rulings in Oldman and MiningWatch, and ensures that federal environmental assessment will have no meaningful relation to ecological or social reality. This will make it all but impossible to establish any kind of consistent national practice.

The substitution and equivalency provisions do precisely what the caucus and others have studied and warned against. It will create a patchwork of inconsistent EA application, both within the federal government and between federal and provincial processes. Rather than seeking to use the federal regime as a backstop for coordinated and harmonized processes, it is to be broken up among agencies with different mandates, structures, and capacities—the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency, the NEB, and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission—and will be further devolved to provincial and land claims mandated processes that have little in common with each other. The contrast between the federal and the B.C. assessments of the Prosperity mine project, which should have undergone a joint review, provides an excellent case study.

By weakening the federal role and splitting up federal assessments among several federal agencies and provincial and territorial EA processes, CEAA 2012 actually balkanizes EA across about 19 very different processes. It's certainly no longer a one-window approach. And given the weakness of its transboundary and regional assessment provisions, it's also doubtful that it will result in having “one project, one assessment”.

In terms of integrated decision-making, while the designated project list approach to triggering an environmental assessment is not necessarily a bad thing, the way it is used in this act is problematic. It's one thing to focus assessment efforts on larger projects with potentially more significant impacts, but in our view, it is a mistake to do so without making any effort to ensure that there are mechanisms to ensure that smaller projects are tracked, monitored, and, as necessary, assessed. At the same time, rather than integrating sustainable development, the screening process and the layers of discretion on whether an assessment will actually be undertaken and what its scope will be will tend to relegate environmental assessment to the margins of decision-making, both for projects and for regulators.

In addition, any mention of strategic environmental assessment—the assessment of policies, plans, and programs—has disappeared completely.

With regard to public participation, that is a key element in environmental assessment. Here, it is curtailed by the restricted number of projects being assessed, diminished opportunities for public participation, and artificially imposed timelines. If you recall, the Supreme Court did back MiningWatch in its decision on the Red Chris mine review, which was based on the guarantee of public participation in comprehensive studies under the 2003 CEAA amendments.

The new act promises public participation, but it provides no criteria and no guarantee that this promise will be carried into substitute processes. It contemplates participant funding only for panel reviews. Regardless, the arbitrarily compressed timeframes imposed under the new act will make meaningful public participation almost impossible. It's important to note that while the act imposes strict limits on the time available for public involvement and specifies only limited options for federal agencies to extend their time, it places no restriction whatsoever on the time a proponent may take in responding to information requests, or to change and resubmit project plans, which they do quite regularly.

In addition, and in combination with the inconsistency created by substitution and equivalency provisions, artificial timelines will make it very difficult for aboriginal communities to fully participate in environmental assessments, in recognition of their constitutionally protected rights. In short, even giving the most generous benefit of the doubt to both the formulation of the act's absent schedules and regulations, and the application of ministerial and bureaucratic discretion—in the general absence of useful criteria, I might add—the key features of this act cannot produce robust, effective, and efficient environmental assessment.

In its key aspects, it makes the process significantly less predictable and consistent. It limits its utility as a forum for establishing a social licence to operate and for fulfilling the Crown's obligation to obtain the free, prior-informed consent of aboriginal peoples for development projects affecting their lands and livelihoods.

The public has an expectation of fair treatment before the law. I would not be the first to note that in the absence of a public process that is perceived to be fair and that allows for the fulfilment of aboriginal peoples' rights, people will tend to take matters into their own hands. Lawsuits and direct action will also create greater uncertainty and unpredictability, and can reasonably be expected to more than counter any anticipated efficiency gains.

It's hard to avoid the conclusion that faced with complex legal and jurisdictional questions, and under pressure from the provinces and some industry sectors, the government has chosen to basically throw up its hands and walk away from all but its essential legal obligations. That is simply not acceptable.

Thank you.