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.

The Environment

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

Mr. Speaker, I am rising today at the hour of adjournment to pursue a question I asked May 2, the day the Minister of Finance tabled Bill C-69. This is what is called, in the vernacular, an omnibus budget bill. Liberals will remember those words because it was in the platform of the Liberals that they would not introduce such things as omnibus budget bills.

Liberals also promised that they would make sure that the legislation brought forward would have full consultation with indigenous peoples as required under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; that did not happen either. We also had a promise to improve environmental assessment. What I did on May 2 was refer to this as something of a hat trick. There were three different platform promises broken in one omnibus budget bill.

The part that concerns me the most, although it is hard to say which is worse, is I think what we have had happen here is a gross violation of our responsibility as parliamentarians to respond to the challenges and the need to have environmental assessment legislation that works, to ensure that it is constitutionally valid and to ensure that it is studied in the appropriate committee.

Let me try to point out one of the major reasons it is so deeply offensive that the Minister of Finance brought forward the changes being made to the environmental impact bill. This is a huge omnibus bill. There are over 40 different divisions, not to mention there are over 300 sections to the bill. We get to the environmental assessment bits by the time we get to division 28, part 6 and then we start realizing something.

This is what I think as an environmental lawyer and I have consulted some friends who do constitutional law. The Liberals may not have fixed the problem that the Supreme Court had because the way they have defined when something is in federal jurisdiction is to get rid of language they think the court did not like, which was language around things like “adverse effect”. They said an adverse effect, and throughout the bill it is the same every time, within federal jurisdiction is a “non-negligible” adverse change. That is repeated multiple times.

My point is we cannot come up with a conclusion that an effect is non-negligible before studying the project and having some idea what the impact is going to be. We cannot decide, ahead of time, that it is non-negligible. It is a tautology. It is hastily drafted. The court ruled that the last version violated the Constitution by having federal intrusions into provincial jurisdiction.

Here is the problem: The bill continues with what Stephen Harper did in wrecking environmental assessment in, yes again, omnibus budget Bill C-38 in spring 2012. This was a chance to fix it. The Liberals blew it.

Budget Implementation Act, 2024, No. 1

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

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise tonight to participate in the debate on Bill C-69. The debate has been treated by some speakers as a debate on the whole budget. That is fair enough as it is the budget implementation bill. I certainly appreciated very much the remarks by my colleague, the hon. member for Kitchener Centre, moments ago, who focused on some aspects of Bill C-69 and the budget that I will not be able to address in my remarks.

In the time I have available, I want to dive deeply into one part of Bill C-69. For those who are observing tonight's debate, perhaps I can just back up and say that this is what is called an omnibus budget bill. It is exactly the kind of bill that, in the 2015 election platform by the Liberals, they said they would not be using. It is an omnibus budget bill in that it deals with many aspects of things that are in the budget, and particularly a reference in the budget to the court case on impact assessment legislation.

What is tucked into a bill that is over 400 pages is, from page 555 to page 581, a section I do not believe should be in there. I will be very clear from the start that it is a rewriting of substantial sections of the Impact Assessment Act. The irony is probably not lost on people who have tracked the debate on environmental assessment in this country that when the Liberals brought in repairs to the environmental assessment legislation that they had promised would be done in the election platform of 2015, that bill was also called Bill C-69.

I voted against that bill. I will be voting against this one too. This speech is my effort to try to persuade government members, and particularly the Minister of Environment and the Minister of Justice, to rethink things and to pull what is called part 4, division 28, of Bill C-69 and instead bring in what was promised in 2015, repairing what had happened to our impact assessment legislation, which is usually called environmental assessment legislation in this country.

I do not have much time to set this out, so forgive me for taking the time it takes to explain it. In 1975, this country held its first federal environmental assessment, ironically, of the Wreck Cove hydro project in my home province of Nova Scotia, on my home island of Cape Breton Island, and I attended those hearings. The federal government at that time was operating under something called the environmental assessment review process, a guidelines order by order in council to the federal cabinet. It set out basically that when the federal government did something, the federal government reviewed its own actions.

There is no question of constitutionality because the federal government was reviewing its own actions. The rule under the guidelines order was that if it was on federal land, involved federal money or permits given under certain kinds of acts, one had to have an environmental assessment. That general formulation went into the drafting in the late 1980s, under the government of the late Right Hon. Brian Mulroney, of an environmental assessment process that again started with the four corners of federal jurisdiction, including whether something is on federal land and involving federal money. It evolved into something called the law list permits, which were given under various acts.

The whole scheme worked very well. It evolved. There were many amendments over the years. It had a five-year review process. By the time 2012 rolled around, one could talk to almost anyone in the industry about it and hear the same thing. It was predictable. With the Mining Association of Canada, for instance, I remember the CEO, Pierre Gratton, asking why the Conservatives were trying to wreck the act now. He said that we had just finally made it right and liked the way it worked.

A federal environmental assessment act was brought in under Brian Mulroney and enacted under former prime minister Jean Chrétien. It had evolved over the years. In the spring of 2012, in an omnibus budget bill called Bill C-38, the government of former prime minister Stephen Harper set out to destroy the legislation. It was repealed in its entirety and was replaced with something called CEAA, 2012.

At the same time, it also went after the pieces of legislation that triggered environmental assessment, the law list sections, the Fisheries Act, the Navigable Waters Protection Act, and so on.

To fast-forward, in the election of 2015, the Liberals promised in the platform to repair and fix what had been done by Harper to environmental assessment, to the Fisheries Act and the Navigable Waters Protection Act. In 2016 and 2017, various ministers went to work. The current Minister of Public Safety, who was the then minister of fisheries, actually did fix the Fisheries Act. He got it back to what it had been before and even improved it. The former minister of transport, our former colleague, the Hon. Marc Garneau, really fixed the Navigable Waters Protection Act. Somehow or other, our former minister of environment, Catherine McKenna, was persuaded, I believe by officials in her department, not to fix it. The single biggest change that was made, besides repealing the Environmental Assessment Act, was to ditch the criteria that tethered environmental assessment to areas of federal jurisdiction if it was on federal land, involved federal money or under a permit given by the federal government.

Instead, Stephen Harper's government created something called the “designated projects” list, which could be anything the ministers thought they wanted to put on the list. It was project-based but not decision-based, and it could be anything, at the minister's discretion. That was CEAA 2012. It meant we went from having 5,000 to 6,000 federal projects a year reviewed, and they were mostly paper reviews that went quickly, to fewer than 100 reviewed every year. We can see perhaps the attraction for people in the civil service to not go back to actually reviewing the federal projects every single year and to keep it to fewer than 100.

Somehow, the federal government, under former minister Catherine McKenna, put forward Bill C-69 and decided to reject the advice of the expert environmental assessment panel, under the former chair of BAPE Johanne Gélinas. It kept the key elements Stephen Harper had put in place, which was that the Environmental Assessment Agency was no longer responsible for many assessments, and regulatory bodies such as the National Energy Board, now the Canada Energy Regulator, the offshore petroleum boards or the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission would do their environmental assessments separately. It also got rid of the idea that we are tethered strongly to federal jurisdiction. It remained discretionary. That is why I voted against Bill C-69..

Former Alberta premier Jason Kenney said that this was the anti-pipeline act. I said that it was completely discretionary to the minister in a different government and that it was the pro-pipeline act. Where is the rooting to federal jurisdiction? Where is the commitment to review everything the federal government does to make sure we have considered its environmental impacts? Those were all thrown out the window. I may have been the only one in the pro-environmental assessment community, although I do not think I was the only one, who actually cheered on October 13, 2023, when the Supreme Court of Canada said that the designated projects list was actually ultra vires the federal government. It would just ask a minister to say what project they want on a list, but it was not rooted in federal jurisdiction the way it had been from 1975, under a guidelines order, to 1993, when it became law, right up until 2012 and Bill C-38 when Harper repealed it.

Then, for some crazy reason, and I use the word “crazy” advisedly because I do not know the reason and I am not referring to anyone in particular, the Liberals decided to keep the designated project list, which is the part that the reference in the decision of the Supreme Court of Canada said was ultra vires the federal government and now stuffed in an omnibus budget bill that we were told we would never see. We get amendments to the Environmental Assessment Act that keep the designated projects list.

I do not think this new version in Bill C-69 is going to get Supreme Court of Canada approval. I know it will not get environmental assessments for projects across this country that need to be assessed. It will not get environmental assessment for Highway 413. It will not get environmental assessment for things that are squarely within federal jurisdiction. What it will do is be a quick and dirty fix that only goes to the finance committee for study.

With that, I will close my opening remarks with what I can only describe as disgust.

Natural Resources

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

Mr. Speaker, I am returning to a question I asked in question period on October 18, 2023, just last fall. The question was asked five days after the Supreme Court of Canada struck down sections of the government's bill on environmental assessment, which it redubbed “impact assessment” and which came forward through Bill C-69.

I practised environmental law. I will briefly share with the chamber that I actually worked in the Mulroney government and took a draft environmental assessment law through to the Privy Council to get permission for the government of the day to bring forward the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, which ultimately entered into force around 1993. It went through several changes. It was an excellent piece of legislation; it worked well. It was repealed under an omnibus budget bill under Prime Minister Stephen Harper's government and was struck down and eliminated by Bill C-38 in spring 2012. That was more than lamentable.

When the new government came in, in 2015, the current Prime Minister gave a mandate letter to the former minister of environment, Catherine McKenna, to fix this. Tragically, she ignored the advice of environmental experts, even those she had empanelled.

What I asked on October 18 was whether the new Minister of Environment and the Minister of Justice would follow the excellent advice of the expert panel on environmental assessment law that was chaired by former Chair of the BAPE, Johanne Gélinas, and many environmental experts, and which was thoroughly supported, certainly by the Green Party and by me. I asked whether we would follow the advice that the essence of environmental assessment law is to evaluate the projects of the federal government itself: at a minimum, the panel said, federal land, federal money or where federal permits are issued. There was an additional list of concerns.

Tragically, the government ignored the advice. It took the advice of the Impact Assessment Agency itself. What I asked the minister on October 18 was whether the government would now commit to reviewing and putting in place the recommendations. An excellent opportunity was created by the court's striking down, as I completely predicted it would, the sections that were based on the designated project list itself, a creation of Harper's Bill C-38, which was a terrible way of weakening environmental law while at the same time failing to honour federal jurisdiction.

The minister missed the point of my question and merely said that they were going to fix it. I am desperately worried they are going to do a quick fix, and that in the quick fix, they will once again listen to the advice of the wrong people.

I beg the parliamentary secretary to tell us tonight that the government will follow the advice of the expert panel that gave them the right road to fixing the environmental assessment law in this country.

Budget Implementation Act, 2023, No. 1

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

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise today, as always, here on the territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe nation. To them I say meegwetch.

We are here tonight to debate Bill C-47. Bill C-47 is not the budget. The budget is a different document. It is related, of course, but Bill C-47 contains those legislative changes that are necessary in order to have the measures in the budget, not all of them but some of them, move ahead.

The measures in the budget that are simply allocations of funds that do not require legislative changes will not be found in Bill C-47, and so I find myself strangely in the position, having studied Bill C-47, of thinking I might vote for it, even though I could not possibly vote for the government's budget. The budget has much in it that I could not support, such as increased subsidies for fossil fuels disguised as carbon capture and storage, and the use of fossil fuels to create hydrogen, thus taking what should be a green fuel and making it a fossil-fuel source again. However, the budget implementation act is not that. Let me go over what it is.

The budget implementation act is 429 pages in four parts. The longest part, part 4, has 39 different divisions. They are wide-ranging and cover many different things. In that, let me confirm that this is an omnibus bill, but it is not an illegitimate omnibus bill. It is nothing like Bill C-38 of spring 2012 when the previous administration under Stephen Harper destroyed 70 different acts in one bill with changes that had not been forecast in the budget. That was an illegitimate omnibus bill. This one is a reasonable omnibus bill, because in order to implement the budget, multiple things need to be changed.

For instance, part 1 of this very long bill deals with the Income Tax Act and such things as creating a deduction for tradesmen's tools and going on to divorce and that separated parents can open up a joint registered educational savings plan for their children. There are such things, as we have heard about, related to the new program to cover dental care and changing the tax rules so that CRA can disclose personal information about Canadians so that they can get their dental care. Part 3 deals with air traveller security changes. I could go on and on, because it is 429 pages. By division 39, at the end of the bill, we have changes to the Canada Elections Act to deal with the protection of personal information. This is a wide-ranging bill. It even touches on foreign policy. This next one is good, and I think Conservatives would want to vote for it too. At division 5 of part 4, we remove Russia and Belarus from the most favoured nation tariff treatment.

I want to devote the time I have remaining to talk about one of the longer sections, which relates to issues I have been working on for years and some of which I was ecstatic to see. This deals with division 21, the oceans protection plan.

The budget itself has two references to our oceans. They are both found on page 135, and they are remarkably brief. One says that we are going to protect Canada's whales. Now, this is basically a dressed up repackaging of new money to such departments as Fisheries and Oceans, Transport Canada, Environment Canada and Parks Canada for what the budget claims will be continuing to protect endangered whales and their habitats. That is just fine and dandy, but that is not in the budget implementation act, which is just as well, because I have rarely been as furious, disillusioned or angry.

I am absolutely distraught by the government's April 20 decision to approve this terrible project that goes against the interests of endangered species.

On April 20, what did the government do just in time for Earth Day? It approved a disastrous project that likely spells the extinction of the southern resident killer whale, our Fraser River chinook salmon and numerous other species, including the western sandpiper. It is a project called Roberts Bank on the Fraser River estuary. It will result in basically covering in concrete over 70% of that flood plain habitat. It is an outrage. It is not in the budget implementation act, but it puts the lie to the budget is going to have a section that protects whales. Right. It is hypocrisy writ large. I see other friends from British Columbia nodding. We know. This is an outrage.

The next part of the budget that deals with oceans is, I think, where we see most of the over 60 pages in the budget implementation act, for what is called the division that deals with the oceans protection plan. That probably relates to this one line item of cleaner and healthier ports. Budget 2023 proposes to provide $165.4 million over seven years to establish a green shipping corridor program to reduce the impact of marine shipping on surrounding ecosystems, and there is more to it.

What do we find in the budget implementation act and how is it relevant to what I just read? I have to say there is a lot in here that is just playing catch up with time passing. This bill deals with things such as oil-sourced pollution. Where there is pollution caused by a vessel, we are increasing how much the shipper, the owner of the ship, might have to pay. I do not think it is enough, by the way. It has changed from what was said in the Marine Liability Act, which is already on the books. Believe it or not, in respect of claims for loss of life or personal injury, it was a $1-million limit. This budget implementation act moves it to a $1.5-million limit and so on. That is one specific area.

There is another specific area that I want to mention briefly because I really think it is important. At page 241 of the budget implementation act is a section which says that under the Marine Liability Act, in terms of costs that the vessel owner and company must be responsible for, under the Hazardous and Noxious Substances Convention, they will now be required to compensate indigenous peoples for economic loss in relation to hunting, fishing, trapping or harvesting rights under section 35 of the Constitution. It is a better recognition of indigenous rights.

There is much here but I do want to concentrate on what was, for me, what I have been hoping for, for some years. Ironically, about a week before the budget implementation act came out, I wrote to the Minister of Finance, Minister of Transport, Minister of Fisheries and Oceans and Minister of Environment to ask if we are ever going to see any measures to implement the Wrecked, Abandoned or Hazardous Vessels Act. Are we ever going to see the promised vessel remediation fund? Is it going to be in the budget implementation act? Surprise, it is. It is found at section 430, page 277 for anyone reading the budget implementation act at home. I have to wonder about their lives if they are reading the budget implementation act at home, especially if they are reading it out loud to their children. It will certainly put anyone to sleep.

It is very exciting because we passed the Wrecked, Abandoned or Hazardous Vessels Act four years ago, in March 2019. We were excited on that day that we got it done. Most people here who do not live in coastal areas would not know what a hazard it is to have an abandoned vessel, somebody's old sailboat. They are fibreglass. If somebody owns them and they are moored in the harbour, moored in navigational lanes, getting rid of them is really hard.

In Atlantic Canada, it is not so hard, because over the course of the winter any abandoned boat will be smashed to bits and gone by spring, but if someone lives along the coast of the Salish Sea or along British Columbia's coast, the boats are there almost forever. In a time when we have the horror of people who are inadequately housed, many people who are homeless will move onto these vessels and live there. They are unsafe.

Once we got the act passed, we thought we had solved the problem, but then the government refused to act. I have constituents who say there is an abandoned vessel and ask if we will do something. The Coast Guard, DFO and Transport Canada all pass the buck and do not move the vessel. The problem is they do not have the money, they say.

Now we have this new fund. Details will come out on how it is going to work in regulations, but I could not be more pleased that we now have a vessel remediation fund and additional powers for the Minister of Transport. There are other related measures in Bill C-33 which we have not yet debated in this place but maybe, just maybe, the budget implementation act, at long last, will allow us to implement the Wrecked, Abandoned or Hazardous Vessels Act.

With that I will close.

Budget Implementation Act, 2022, No. 1

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

Madam Speaker, I thank the hon. Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance for opening her speech with a condemnation of the loss of women's rights that appears to be imminent in the United States.

I want to address the issue of the budget implementation act by starting with a fair statement. I have gone through the bill, and of course it is very long. I do not find any hidden, sneaky things that should not be in a budget implementation bill, as we experienced in 2012 with two budget implementation bills, Bill C-38 and Bill C-45, that were disastrous. Then we had, in 2018, one sneaky thing that I lament, which was putting deferred prosecution agreements in the Criminal Code. That should not have been in a budget implementation act. It is hard to prove a negative, but right now it looks like there is nothing sneaky in this bill.

The main thing I want to ask the minister about is her reference to the climate crisis as an existential threat, which is defined as a threat to existence. It is a threat to the existence of a habitable planet. If we read the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's April 4 report, we are currently on a trajectory to an unlivable world. This budget is not taking us away from that trajectory; it doubles down on it.

Would the hon. minister consider re-examining this bill and all bills in relation to the IPCC report?

Resuming Debate on the Canadian Net-Zero Emissions Accountability Act

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

Madam Speaker, I will not comment on the individuals involved. Many of them are colleagues or friends. It does not matter, the structure is wrong. This is not a time for a multi-stakeholder group. I strongly recommend, and I have done so to the minister, that the government bring back the national round table on the environment and the economy, which was killed by Stephen Harper in the omnibus budget, Bill C-38. We do like multi-stakeholder advice, and we like multi-stakeholders at committees, but this is not a place for a multi-stakeholder committee. This is a place for a panel of experts to make sure the government understands the science, because so far it does not seem to.

The Environment

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

Madam Speaker, in Adjournment Proceedings this evening, I am pursuing a question for which I did not receive an adequate answer on November 20.

I asked about the new legislation before us, Bill C-12, which proclaims itself as a net-zero climate accountability act. It fails on almost every point. The Green caucus is struggling with how to handle it. We want so very much to support climate accountability, but we struggle with whether we can even vote for this legislation at second reading to send it to committee.

Here is what the legislation must do as the bottom line requirement to be called accountability on net zero for climate action: We have to get the science right, we have to get the process right and we have to get the accountability right. Right now, it has three strikes and this legislation is out.

Getting the science right means that in the preamble, one does not cite one aspect of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change science, that to hold to 1.5°C we must have net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, all the while ignoring the closer-term reality of the emergency and the urgency. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change also says that to have any hope of holding to 1.5°C, we need massive reductions in greenhouse gases in the next decade.

It is not an even pace of having three decades so we take our time and do it in even bits every 10 years. No, we cannot do that. Most of the heavy lifting has to be done before 2030. That is not clear in the legislation. As a matter of fact, it is denied by the way the legislation is structured with a first milestone year in 2030.

Next is getting the process right. I am honestly baffled that the Liberal government appears to have ignored the experience garnered in other countries with climate accountability legislation. The U.K. has had its legislation since 2008. There are lessons to be learned there. Similarly, New Zealand, which brought in its legislation, learned from the U.K.'s experience, as did Denmark. All of the climate accountability legislation in countries where it is working has relied on expert advice. To the extent they have an advisory group, they are experts.

This legislation wants to have an advisory body that seems to be another version of a multistakeholder group without expertise. That is a very significant error. I like multistakeholder groups. I used to be vice-chair of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy, which was destroyed and repealed. It was originally put in place by the Mulroney government, by the way, and it was repealed under Bill C-38 in the spring of 2012. We should bring a national round table or something like that back, but not through the back door of Bill C-12, where we need expertise, not multistakeholder advice.

The third area of accountability that fails is having the mechanisms to hold the government to account and getting them right. This bill does not use mandatory language around the minister meeting a target. It is interesting. I have been conferring with colleagues in New Zealand and they are looking at saying, if the target is missed, that means the government will have to make up what it missed by buying credits and paying for them. Their finance department is getting ready to book the costs of missing the target. Therefore, there is a financial penalty and the government will then be keeping its eye on the ball to avoid that penalty.

The bottom line here is that the Paris Agreement now has the support of the United States, President-elect Joe Biden has appointed a high-level special envoy in John Kerry. Canada should be jumping up right now to be bold and ambitious.

This bill is not what we need. I hope we can see changes before it comes back at third stage and report stage.

Fisheries Act

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to speak to Bill C-68, an act to amend the Fisheries Act and other acts in consequence. Today, we are debating the Senate amendments to the bill, as was just mentioned. I initially spoke to this bill at report stage almost exactly one year ago today. I will be covering some of the same ground as I did then, but today I want to spend a little more time speaking in general terms about fisheries conservation.

Although I grew up in the Okanagan Valley far from the coast, my family has a deep history in coastal fisheries. My mother's family, the Munns, once controlled the cod fishery of Labrador. My great-uncle William Azariah Munn was what one might call a cod liver oil baron. He was also an amateur fisheries biologist and historian. W.A. Munn not only researched the Viking sagas but was the first to suggest that Vineland was located on the northern peninsula of Newfoundland, which was subsequently vindicated by the findings at L'Anse aux Meadows. He wrote the first detailed account of the annual migration of codfish in the Newfoundland waters in 1922. I found that out when I was reading the assessment report on northern cod when it was declared endangered. It was cited in the report.

I will mention in passing that I am wearing my Memorial University tie this morning to honour that part of my heritage and history. I thank Bill Kavanagh for that.

Although I grew up in the interior, like most kids of that era, I grew up fishing, in my case, catching small rainbow trout in a small creek near our house. I knew the importance of cool waters and deep pools in a stream shaded from the summer sun, good fish habitat in my part of the country.

The Fisheries Act has long been the strongest piece of legislation that protected habitat, terrestrial or aquatic, in Canada. I used to be a biologist in my past life. I spent a lot of time working on ecosystem health, endangered species recovery and time and again my colleagues would point out that the only legislation, federal or provincial, that effectively protected habitat outside parks was the federal Fisheries Act. This habitat protection was at the core of earlier versions of the Fisheries Act. Conservatives took out that protection in 2012 with Bill C-38, one of their omnibus budget bills.

The action resulted in a public outcry. Four former fisheries ministers, including one of my constituents, Tom Siddon, wrote an open letter to the government urging it to keep habitat protections in the act. I saw Tom last weekend at an event in my riding and I am happy to say that he is still standing up for the environment.

This act still is deficient in a few ways regarding habitat. For instance, while it talks about water in the rivers and lakes as fish habitat, it does not discuss the amount of that water, the flow. That is clearly a problem as water is obviously the most important ingredient in fish habitat. Those deep, cool pools I fished in are becoming shallower and warmer. Bill C-68 would empower the fisheries and oceans minister to make management orders prohibiting or limiting fishing to address a threat to the conservation and protection of fish. I am fully in favour of that power, but I wonder how often it would be used despite the fact that it would likely be recommended on a regular basis by scientists.

Fish are consistently treated differently from terrestrial species in conservation actions. As an example, of all the fish species assessed as threatened or endangered in recent years by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, less than half have been placed on the Species at Risk Act schedules. A bird or mammal in trouble is generally added to those schedules as a matter of course, but fish are out of luck. This attitude must change.

I am happy to see the Senate amendment that includes shark-finning laws proposed by my colleague from Port Moody—Coquitlam over the years and Senator Mike MacDonald in the other place. I am very happy to see those private members' bills rolled into this new act in the Senate amendments.

I am also happy to see there is a provision in this act that would give the DFO more resources for enforcement. I hope that some of these resources can be used to rebuild the DFO staff that used to be found throughout the interior of B.C. to promote fish habitat restoration, rebuild fish stocks and watch what is happening on the ground. There are no DFO staff left at all in my riding in the Okanagan and Kootenay regions, despite the fact that there are numerous aquatic stewardship societies across the riding that used to have a great relationship with the DFO. Volunteer groups that are devoted to aquatic habitats in the Arrow Lakes, the Slocan Valley, Christina Lake, the Kettle River watershed, Osoyoos Lake and Vaseux Lake could all benefit through a renewal of those staffing levels.

I would like to close with a good-news story that shows what can happen when Canadians take fish conservation into their own hands, identify problems and solutions and then work hard to make good things happen. That is the story of restoring salmon populations in the Okanagan. This story involves many players from both the United States and Canada but it is mainly a story of the Syilx people, the indigenous peoples of the Okanagan, who came together to bring salmon back to the valley.

Salmon, n’titxw, is one of the four food chiefs of the Syilx and central to their culture and trade traditions. In fact, that is true for many other first nations in the B.C. interior and Yukon, indigenous communities hundreds or thousands of kilometres from the ocean that rely on salmon, that have always relied on salmon and whose cultures are inextricably tied to salmon.

When I was a kid in the Okanagan, very few salmon came up the river from the Pacific. The Okanagan is part of the Columbia system, and those fish had to climb over 11 dams to get to the Okanagan River and back to their spawning grounds. Most of the Columbia salmon runs died out after huge dams like Grand Coulee and Chief Joseph were built and blocked its free flow. The Okanagan flows into the Columbia below Grand Coulee, so a handful of sockeye came back to the Okanagan every year.

However, after years of work by the Okanagan Nation Alliance and other groups, we often see runs of over 100,000 fish, occasionally 400,000 or more. The Okanagan River is once again red with sockeye in the autumn. In most years there is a successful sports fishery for sockeye in Osoyoos Lake.

The ONA has spearheaded significant restoration projects on the Okanagan River, restoring natural flows to small parts of the river and creating ideal spawning beds in others. They organize cultural ceremonies and salmon feasts that bring the broader communities together to celebrate the cycle of the salmon.

The ONA has grown to be one of the largest inland fisheries organizations in Canada with 45 full-time staff. Compare that to zero for the DFO in my area. It has its own state-of-the-art hatchery and fish virology lab.

To make a difference, to change our country and our communities for the better, we must have a vision for a better future. The Syilx vision includes healthy lakes and rivers filled with salmon, salmon that enrich the entire ecosystem and enrich the lives of everyone in the region. I share that vision. The vision includes restoring salmon not just to the entire Okanagan system, but to the upper Columbia River as well, reviving the salmon culture in the Kootenays.

That small creek I used to fish in as a kid now has more than rainbow trout. Every year a few chinook salmon, the big guys, make it into that creek after their epic trip up from the Pacific. That is beyond my wildest dreams.

If we take care of our lakes, our rivers and even the smallest creeks, we can keep this country healthy and beautiful. As the Syilx Okanagan song says, “We are beautiful because our land is beautiful.”

The bill before us could have been bolder and more effective, but it is a chance to take a small step towards that end, towards that vision.

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

Mr. Speaker, I am able to answer a question from my hon. colleague from Cariboo—Prince George.

Yes, Bill C-38, in the spring of 2012, gutted the Fisheries Act. Yes, it was an appalling decision to take away protections for habitat. On the ground, the effect was that habitat officers for DFO were laid off. I got calls all the time. My hon. colleague knows I tell the truth on these things. People would call me to say they called DFO about a beach where a clam licence was allowed that was being over-harvested, and DFO would tell them that officials could not get there and there was nothing they could do. There were times when habitat was being destroyed and people working on stream restoration who lost funding would call DFO to say that habitat was being lost for cutthroat trout and for getting salmon back, and the answer would be that DFO could not help, because there was no law and DFO did not have any manpower.

We need Bill C-68 to be passed. I lament that it was a bit weakened when my amendment that was accepted at committee was removed, but this bill needs to pass. Every single fisheries organization, the economic backbone of my community, wants this legislation passed before we leave this place.

Report stage

[Matthew Dubé, NDP, Beloeil—Chambly, QC]

Madam Speaker, the good news is that despite this “man cold”, as my wife calls it, my voice seems to be back. I hope it will stick around for the next 15 minutes so that I can speak to budget implementation act, 2018, No. 2. Before getting to what is in the bill or, more to the point, what is not, which might make up the bulk of my comments, I want to talk about the process.

After all, this is an omnibus bill, like the ones we saw so often under the previous government. The current government actually campaigned on a pledge to end the use of omnibus bills. The Liberals not only broke that promise, but they are constantly introducing omnibus bills. They use them not just for budgets, but also for other areas like public safety, transport and justice. We keep getting bills that are harder and harder for parliamentarians to study in any meaningful way.

I may be mistaken about the numbers, which we can check, but the mere fact that we can evoke this type of image says a lot. The Conservatives' first omnibus bill, Bill C-38, which was introduced in 2012 in the last Parliament, showed how abusive this practice had become. The bill was the nadir of this anti-democratic tendency, seeking to undermine the employment insurance program and eliminate the already inadequate environmental assessment process. The bill was hundreds of pages long.

If we were to combine the Conservatives' first omnibus bill from 2012 with the Liberals' first omnibus bill—not the one we are currently debating—we would have a bill the same size as the one before us, which is over 800 pages long.

That is completely ridiculous. I gather some of us are burning the midnight oil in our offices to read the bill. Some members say that they are sick of looking at the four walls of their offices, so they go read it at home. However, let us be honest. The idea that we have the time to consult our constituents, speak to stakeholders on the various files that critics are responsible for, read up on subjects of interest to MPs, and also read Bill C-86, including all the acts it amends, is simply unrealistic.

Some might say that this violates our parliamentary privileges. I am not looking to start a debate on privilege, but I do think it is important to point out how hard this makes it for us to do our jobs.

Even setting aside the size of the bill, the weight of it, and the rule against using props during debate in the House, I would advise my constituents not to print it out. It would be a waste of paper. The thing is massive.

On top of introducing a massive bill, the government has moved time allocation. Not only is it limiting debate in the wider sense by introducing a bill that is extremely difficult to study and therefore to debate, but it is also limiting the time for debate. In 10 or 20 minutes, the normal length of a speech in the House, it is impossible to address every issue. Plus, the government wants to limit the time for debate. This means that we, as the second opposition party, get to put up about eight speakers at most, out of about 40 or so MPs.

Some might say that the budget process, and therefore the budget implementation bill, are among the most important duties of the federal government. The fact that less than one-third of the members of a recognized opposition party get a chance to speak is a real problem.

Let us put the procedural issue aside, since we could talk for ages about this broken promise. I also want to talk about what is missing from this bill and, by extension, from the Liberals' budget. Unfortunately, the Liberals have neglected these elements too often over these past few years, since they came to power.

I would like to focus on a few aspects in particular. First, the government is still not charging web giants sales tax, even though that is a relatively simple matter. It is a matter of fairness and common sense.

When I was in my riding during the last parliamentary recess, I spoke with a constituent who told me that that is today's reality. We now get services via the Internet. That is how we download music, movies and television shows.

We are not asking the government to reinvent the wheel or to go against an existing trend. We are asking it to do two things. First, we are asking it to put all businesses on a level playing field. If Canadians order goods or services online, then they should have to pay sales tax the same way they would in a regular store. That may seem obvious to those watching at home, but the Liberal government has failed to do anything about this for far too long.

The Government of Quebec has led the way, and we hope that the other provinces and territories will follow its lead. However, with all due respect for our National Assembly colleagues, I have to say that it is not enough. The federal government has economic levers that it must use to level the playing field for businesses so that Canadians can benefit from the revenue generated under the law. That is what is lacking right now. However, it is not only the web giants, such as Netflix, Google, and Facebook, that must be required to charge sales tax. All the other digital platforms on which people can purchase goods must be, as well. The government is currently relying on the good faith of some stakeholders who have chosen to proactively charge sales tax.

Second, an agreement needs to be made regarding the future of our culture, specifically with regard to Netflix. I am not as familiar with this topic as my colleague from Longueuil—Saint-Hubert, who I am sure would have a lot to say about music platforms like Spotify and Apple Music. For now, I want focus on Netflix because I do not have much time.

I will not discuss the sales tax for now. I have no doubt the former heritage minister had a rough time in Quebec. Pretty much everyone unanimously agreed that her Netflix deal fell short, not only because of the percentage of francophone and Quebec content, which is nil, but also because the government asked so little of Netflix. The government is counting on the company to operate on the honour system and obey the law proactively.

Madam Speaker, I see your signal that I have just two minutes left. What better proof that it is impossible to study an omnibus bill in the time provided.

France and other countries offer examples of different ways to do this. We can also come up with our own model to acknowledge that this is the new normal without letting Internet giants rake in the profits while crushing our culture. We need to promote our cultural sector so that it can continue to make all of its unique offerings available to us with content that is our very own. This is about quality content and our duty to remember and share.

I will now move on to something else that is missing from the Liberals' budget.

The Minister of National Revenue keeps talking about a $1-billion investment. The only thing that investment did was rub salt in the wound by uncovering the billions of dollars that are lost to tax evasion and tax avoidance. We see that cronyism is alive and well in the Liberal Party. The issue of the Panama papers and the paradise papers has not been resolved. Nothing has been done to recover those billions of dollars. Again, it is a matter of fairness.

In closing, I would say that the omnibus bill does very little to address the problems that the supposedly progressive Liberals promised to fix and this is their third attempt at it. That is three attempts and three failures.

Natural Resources

[Blaine Calkins, Conservative, Red Deer—Lacombe, AB]

Mr. Speaker, is there something funny about what I am saying? I do not know why this is so funny. People in my province are desperate. They are looking for jobs and opportunities. We have so many problems right now in central Alberta as a result of the current energy policies, which I guess is a source of humour to my colleagues across the way, one of whom is from Newfoundland and ought to understand the value of the energy sector. However, I will not digress.

Fossil fuels are so ingrained in every aspect of our lives, and when we say that a carbon tax is a tax on everything, it is absolutely true. Take a look around this room. Nothing in this room could be brought to us today without the use of fossil fuels. The wood would have to be harvested by fossil-fuel-powered equipment in the forestry sector. It would be cut in a sawmill and then refined and finished in a shop that relied heavily on electricity or other fossil fuels. The stone would not be quarried by hand. This would be done by heavy equipment. The food on the table out there came from a farm or was shipped here from another country. I am pretty sure that the pineapple on the plate in the government's lobby did not come from Newfoundland and Labrador or Alberta. It likely came from Hawaii.

How did it get here? It got here on an airplane. It was not a solar-powered one. It got here on an airplane or a ship that was powered by fossil fuels. Everything we have, the medical advancements and all the technology we have, is because we have cheap, reliable, affordable fossil fuels. It is absolutely critical that we do not get disconnected from that.

Should we be as energy efficient as possible? Absolutely. If the government was proposing energy efficient ideas, I would support them on a one-off basis if they had merit and were sustainable.

I do not know why in this country we have to hate oil and gas in order to like solar power and wind power and all these other things. Energy, and the taxes and the benefits it provides to our economy, pays for schools, infrastructure, health care and medicine. If our economy was doing so well, it would not be nearly impossible to balance a budget. However, the government seems to be either ideologically opposed to, or is actually misleading Canadians about, the economic success it has. It should be very easy to balance a budget in a good economy.

Notwithstanding that, let us have a short history lesson, because the government likes to basically blame everyone before it for everything it is failing at right now.

The Prime Minister inherited a balanced budget and three tidewater applications from one mandate of a Conservative government that had a majority in this House. I chaired the subcommittee on finance for Bill C-38. The industry had asked us to streamline and harmonize all the environmental regulations, which resulted in the pipeline applications the government across the way has botched so badly. The Parliamentary Budget Officer has said that a balanced budget is gone until 2045, 2050, or 2055.

We had three tidewater pipeline projects in the hopper. We did not inherit any of those from a previous Liberal government. None of those were applied for during the five years we were a minority parliament, because, of course, the Liberal Party, the NDP and the Bloc Québécois would block basically any legislative attempts we had in the House to harmonize or streamline the regulatory process and bring certainty so that the investment sector would actually want to do this. We had four and a half years. Bill C-38 was passed, and the three pipelines were applied for.

The government of the day inherited three tidewater pipeline applications. Each one of them, if we look at the total kilometres, would add up to about 7,000 kilometres of tidewater pipelines. The Prime Minister of today has presided over the demise of energy east, which was over 4,000 kilometres of pipeline to tidewater, and northern gateway, which was 1,100 kilometres of pipeline to tidewater. Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain is hanging on by a thread. It is not because Kinder Morgan wants to build it. It would like to flee this marketplace as well. Therefore, the government of the day now has to use taxpayer dollars to rescue the only project, for political reasons. It has nothing to do with science. It has nothing to do with technology or the capabilities and competencies of the energy sector. The energy sector knows how to build pipelines. It is the only one that actually does. I have a lot more faith in Kinder Morgan building the pipeline than the Government of Canada building the pipeline, because it knows how to do it. It has been doing it for 60 or 70 years through British Columbia without major incident.

Here is where we are today. We are sitting at a crossroads in this country, where we have the third-largest reserves of oil in the world and we cannot get our pipelines to tidewater. Some members over there are saying that the oil that goes through the Kinder Morgan pipeline already ends up in the United States. That is actually quite true. All the gas exported from Canada, 100%, goes to the United States. According to this report, 97% of the oil in the export market from Canada goes to the United States. That is because Vancouver is a shallow port, and large tankers will not come in to the port, which is why northern gateway was so important. It went to a deepwater port a little further north on the coast of British Columbia, where a supertanker or any large vessel could actually go in and fill up the ship. That was the one that was going to diversify the market. Saudi, Nigerian and Venezuelan oil comes in by the boatload along the Atlantic coast, which I guess does not deserve the same protection with a tanker ban as the west coast.

Why? Why would our friends in Newfoundland and Labrador and Atlantic Canada not want to use oil that was sourced in Canada?

I have been here for a long time. I noticed who was on the plane going back and forth to Alberta when times were good, when there was certainty in the industry. It was people from Quebec. The planes that stopped in Ottawa to pick me up and take me back to Alberta came from Halifax, came from St. John's, Newfoundland. They were full of people wearing Shell Albian jackets, Pearl oil sands project jackets, Firebag project jackets. These people were providing for their families. They could have just stayed home if they wanted to and worked at thousands of jobs that would have been created at the other end of the pipeline.

It is not just the pipeline. It is not just the jobs in the creation of the pipeline. It is jobs at each end. It is jobs in Alberta, Saskatchewan, northern B.C. It is jobs for western Canadians. It is jobs in Atlantic Canada, processing, refining, upgrading, shipping and exporting Canadian products rather than watching the ships roll in from kingdoms like Saudi Arabia. The current Liberal government does not even have a relationship with Saudi Arabia anymore, even though we are still buying its oil, as well as oil from other despots and dictators who do not have anywhere close to the same environmental and human rights standards that Canada has.

The NDP, the Bloc, the Green Party and the Liberals all want to argue about how important environmental regulations are, and I would agree. I am an outdoorsman. I want clean water. I want clean air. I want clean land. I want to fish in a clean river. I want to hunt for moose where it is nice and I can trust that there is no environmental pollution.

I live in Alberta. I am not worried about any of those things. The air that I breathe is clean. The rivers that flow through my community are clear and blue. The land and resources in Alberta are wonderful.

I do not understand. Who are we comparing ourselves to when it comes to our environmental regulations? What is the problem? Could somebody point out to me the last major oil spill that we were not able to handle or clean up? Where is the problem, or is it actually a problem?

It is all about money. It is not about the environment. The carbon tax is not about the environment either. It is just about money. It is all a wealth transfer. It is all about people who want to be part of the process because they want the money, and that is fine. Let us just call it what it is.

Here is where we are. We are at the crossroads right now. We cannot say that Canada is a laggard when it comes to environmental stewardship or human rights, because no other oil-producing and exporting country in the world is better than we are. We are probably on par with Norway and the United States. There might be a few pluses and minuses in a few categories but we are on par with those guys. We are well ahead of Saudi Arabia.

The Liberal government cannot even keep our borders secure. There is no line-up of people from Canada fleeing to Iran or Iraq, both oil-producing countries in the Middle East. Could it be because Canada actually has it right and that all of the problems that we have here are manufactured political problems?

I have been to downtown Vancouver, where I have seen people driving cars. I have been to downtown Montreal, where I have seen people driving cars. I have been to downtown Toronto, where I have seen people driving cars. Why do we want to make that more expensive? Why do we want to make the cost of shipping goods to and from these people more expensive? Why do we want to make travel for Canadians to a warm climate in the wintertime more expensive?

Energy is the lifeblood of everything that is good in this country. I will go back to that point one more time.

All of the things that we have in our life that are good right now are brought to us by the advancement of fossil fuels. Until we refined kerosene several hundred years ago, we were burning wood and coal, which was messy and dirty. We were using basically 80% to 90% of all of the crops that we grew just to feed our horses and our cows. Now 3% of the population can grow the world's food, because of fossil fuels.

Now we have opportunities to be researchers, lawyers, musicians, artists. We do not have to worry about where our next meal is coming from. We do not have to worry about subsistence living here in Canada, because we have fossil fuels.

Today, the leader of my party, the Conservative Party of Canada, said that after the next election, when he became the prime minister of Canada, he would exercise the powers available to the government to do nation-building projects. That does not mean we will run roughshod over everyone. It just means we cannot have these stalemates go on for ever, because it drives investment out of our economy.

Should first nations be involved? Absolutely. Should we do everything we can to ensure, from an environmental perspective, that we can mitigate almost all the risks? Of course. No one will argue about that.

Why can the government not get this pipeline built? Let us take a look.

The Northern gateway project was approved. It had 209 conditions. Enbridge was moving ahead with it. It had spent about $1.5 billion of shareholders' money on that project to get it built. Over 30 of the 42 first nations along the route publicly supported it. Two were publicly opposed. The remaining 10 or so would not declare publicly whether they would support it or not.

Enbridge had the task then, through the National Energy Board, to go and resolve those 209 conditions set out by the board. It was on its way to do it. As a private sector company, it needed to get the buy-in from the first nations along the route. It had already been tested through our Constitution, through our courts. All of that process could be played out. The government did not need to get involved in that. That was Enbridge's job, and it was doing it.

Then the election happened and the pipeline was killed. It was a political decision, because the science and technical expertise at the National Energy Board said that pipeline was perfectly valid to go ahead. With 30 of 42 first nations publicly supporting it, or 75% of the first nations publicly supporting it along the route, I guess that was not enough. I am not sure we will ever get consensus on anything, which I think suits the Liberal Party just fine.

Anyway, the project is killed, the tanker ban is in place and there is no new investment coming for northern British Columbia at all, zero. The folks in northern British Columbia want the pipeline built. They want those jobs.

Energy east was another pipeline. One of the first things that happened after the government was elected in 2015 was it changed the regulatory review process by adding a six month and a three month process on to energy east and Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipelines, kicking the can down the road. According to the government of the day, it needed to do this because it would ensure these projects would have the social license, whatever that is, to get the pipeline built.

Then when it looked like Trans Canada was actually going to proceed and get Energy east built, the mayor of Montreal at the time, Denis Coderre, who was a former Liberal cabinet minister and member of Parliament in the House, said that he did not want the pipeline there. I did not realize that mayors of towns were responsible for telling the National Energy Board what to do, but apparently the Prime Minister of Canada today listens to them, rather than the technical experts at the National Energy Board.

It does not matter that pipelines are already going all the way through the community. People who have natural gas in their houses have a pipeline right to their houses. However, I digress.

Trans Canada was trying to get that pipeline built and what happened? The government said “It looks like we're going to have a success here. Let's put some more regulatory obstacles in by putting upstream and downstream emission standards on a pipeline”. Guess what. Trans Canada shelved the project. Why would it not^ Why would it expose more of its shareholders' money to that risk? Just like Enbridge had to walk away from, I am guessing, over a billion dollars worth of investment, Trans Canada did the same thing. It shelved the project.

That was two out of three gone. Now we have one pipeline left and it stands alone. All the social justice warriors, all the environmental activists and everyone could focus on this one pipeline. Guess what. All they did was get in front of the right judge and they got the ruling. The government could not even follow its own rules to build a pipeline that it had to buy from the private sector. That money is now going to projects elsewhere to compete against us. It now wants to sell this pipeline that it cannot build to a future investor. The Liberals are in charge. There is no doubt about it.

Impact Assessment Act

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

Madam Speaker, in the past I practised environmental law for a while and I have worked in the environmental field for a long time and I am quite familiar with laws in other countries. It is unlikely that the hon. member will take my word for it, but Canada does not have the best environmental assessment process, the toughest regulations, and the best endangered species law at all. That was the case even before Bill C-38 in the spring of 2012. After the changes to environmental assessment by the Harper government in Bill C-38, we had one of the worst, weakest, and most inconsistent and incoherent environmental assessment processes in the industrialized world. Sadly, tragically, Bill C-69 would not restore the consistent, predictable process we had that ensured that anything within federal jurisdiction would be reviewed.

Just so the hon. member knows what countries to which I refer, anything in the European Union is stronger, the United States is much stronger, and New Zealand is much stronger in their anticipatory environmental assessments, which is why it is such a tragedy that Canada, which knows how to do this better, is failing to do so now.

Report Stage

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

Madam Speaker, I always welcome young women to this place, and especially young women with grit and determination, like the young member for Lethbridge. I regret that I disagree with everything she said this evening about Bill C-68.

I do not know if she is aware, but in 2012, the national organization representing municipalities in this country, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, urged the Harper government to remove the sections from Bill C-38 that would weaken the protection of fish habitat. By the way, the motion that was brought forward on the floor of the FCM convention came from none other than a former Conservative fisheries minister, the hon. Tom Siddon, who also joined in an open letter denouncing the weakening of fish habitat protection, which was also signed by another former Conservative fisheries minister, the hon. John Fraser. Bill C-38 was an egregious attack on the fisheries resource.

The fisheries resource and agriculture resource need not be in conflict, and in Bill C-68 they are not.

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to speak tonight to Bill C-68, the new Fisheries Act. Although I grew up, and still live, far from the coast, my family has deep history in coastal fisheries. My mother's family, the Munns, once controlled the cod fishery of Labrador. My great uncle William Azariah Munn was what one might call a cod liver oil baron. Luckily, my mother hated the stuff so much that she did not force it on me and my siblings.

Getting back to the bill, the bill comes from a Liberal promise in the last election campaign when both the NDP and Liberals ran on platforms that included the repealing of Conservative legislation that gutted all of the environmental protections of federal legislation. We are very happy the Liberals have finally acted on this, although I am not sure why it took so long.

The bill would finally restore protection for all fish across Canada. When I say all fish, I would like to point out that under the previous Conservative legislation, all fish were not created equal. Only those fish that were part of a commercial or indigenous fishery were protected, and they were not protected as strongly as they were in the past. I am happy that some of our rarest and most vulnerable fish species, like the speckled dace of the Kettle River, are now protected in this manner once again.

In the past, the Fisheries Act was the strongest piece of legislation that actually protected habitat in Canada. As many here know, I was a biologist in my past life, and I spent a long time working on ecosystem recovery plans and species at risk. Time and again, my colleagues would point out that the only legislation, federal or provincial, that effectively protected habitat, was the Fisheries Act. As a biologist who worked on land, I was always a bit jealous of my fisheries colleagues since there was little or nothing that had the same power of protection for terrestrial habitats.

This habitat protection was at the core of earlier versions of the Fisheries Act. The Conservatives took this habitat protection out in 2012 through Bill C-38, one of their omnibus budget bills. This action resulted in a huge public outcry, and among the voices were four former fisheries ministers, including one of my constituents, Tom Siddon, a former Conservative fisheries minister. He wrote an open letter to the government, urging it to keep habitat protections in the act.

This new act is still deficient in a few ways regarding habitat. For instance, while it talks about the water in rivers and lakes as fish habitat, it does not discuss the amount of that water. That is clearly important. Increasingly, low water levels in our rivers and lakes are causing difficulties for fish. Many of our fish require good quantities of clean, cool water, and more and more often they are faced in late summer with low levels of warm water that can be lethal to fish, especially to salmonids.

This act also does not address the habitat conflict between wild salmon stocks and the practice of open-net salmon farms. We should be moving in an orderly fashion toward closed containment farms to isolate fish health issues caused by the farms that impact wild salmon stocks under the open-net regime.

Bill C-68 empowers the fisheries and oceans minister to make management orders prohibiting or limiting fishing to address a threat to the conservation and protection of fish. Of course, I am fully in favour of this power, but I wonder how often it would be used, despite the fact that it would likely be recommended on a regular basis by scientists.

Fish are consistently treated differently from terrestrial species in conservation actions. As an example, of all the fish species assessed as threatened or endangered in recent years by the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada, less than half have actually been placed on the Species at Risk Act schedules. If a terrestrial species is in trouble, it is generally added to the list as a matter of course. However, but if a fish is in trouble, it is out of luck. This attitude has to change.

As well, the bill would give a lot of discretion to the minister to make decisions based on opinion rather than on scientific evidence. This practice must be limited and only used in exceptional circumstances. I am always concerned when it is enshrined in legislation and seemingly encouraged, as it is here and in other recent legislation, such as Bill C-69 on environmental impact assessments.

I am happy there is a provision in this act to give the DFO more resources for enforcement. I hope some of those resources can be used to rebuild the DFO staff that used to be found throughout the British Columbia interior to promote fish habitat restoration and rebuilding fish stocks.

There are no DFO staff left at all in the Okanagan and Kootenay regions now, despite the fact that there are numerous aquatic stewardship societies across my riding that used to have a great relationship with DFO and its work, and which benefited from that work. Volunteer groups that are devoted to aquatic habitats on the Arrow Lakes, the Slocan Valley, Christina Lake, the Kettle River watershed, Osoyoos Lake, and Vaseux Lake would all benefit through a renewal of those staffing levels. They talk to me regularly about that, and that they miss that help.

I would like to close with a good-news story that shows what can happen when Canadians take fish conservation into their own hands, identify the problems and solutions, and then work hard to make good things happen. That story is the restoration of salmon populations in the Okanagan. This story involves many players and funding from the United States as well as Canada, but it is mainly a story of the Okanagan Nation Alliance, ONA, the first nations of the Okanagan, who came together to bring salmon back to the valley.

Salmon, or n’titxw, is one of the four food chiefs of the Okanagan peoples, and is central to their cultural and trade traditions. When I was a kid in the Okanagan, salmon were in very low numbers. The Okanagan is part of the Columbia system, and those fish had to climb over 11 dams to get back to the spawning grounds. Most of the Columbia River salmon runs died out, but a few sockeye came back to the Okanagan every year, though maybe a only a couple of thousand in some years. However, after years of work by the ONA and other groups, we often see runs of over 100,000 fish. The Okanagan River is once again red with sockeye in the autumn. The ONA has taken an ecosystem-collaborative restoration approach that combines cultural ceremonies and salmon feasts with technical restoration. They work collaboratively with provincial and federal authorities, and everyone in the region has benefited, with recreational fishery openings, an increase in licence revenues, and local salmon to the public. I enjoy the sockeye out of Osoyoos Lake every year now.

This approach has enabled the ONA to grow to one of the largest inland first nations fisheries organizations in Canada. It has 45 full-time staff, which is probably 10 times the staffing level of DFO in the interior of B.C. It has its own hatchery, biology lab, habitat restoration course, and courses that are even taken by DFO staff.

However, even though they have been working collaboratively with DFO, they have still identified some serious issues to me.

First, there is a need for a harvest sharing agreement between Canada and the U.S. There is no agreement in place to ensure minimum food fishery requirements for first nations, and there is no other place in the Pacific region where there is up to 150,000 salmon harvested between Canada and the U.S. that does not have such an agreement in place.

Second, ONA has asked for support for the Columbia River Treaty renewal and the importance of Canadian salmon. Okanagan salmon are the only Columbia River salmon returning to Canada, and they are directly affected by how Canada stores water in its treaty dams.

Third, it points out the need for support for ONA's salmon restoration in the upper Columbia, which is in the Kootenay region. There are no salmon there now. ONA submitted a proposal to DFO and asked the minister back in September 2017, but it has received no response.

Fourth, the ONA regrets to see the overall exclusion of first nations at the Columbia River Treaty table, which is something that is very important to them.

To conclude, we will be supporting Bill C-68, but there is clearly still a lot of work to be done to protect our fish and our fisheries.

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

Mr. Speaker, I wonder if I can put this to the hon. member for Haliburton—Kawartha Lakes—Brock.

Is he aware that we had the Fisheries Act from 1868 until 2012 protecting fish wherever they were found? Is he aware that the protection of fish habitat was put in place under the former Trudeau administration by the right hon. Romeo LeBlanc? All the economic development that happened in Canada was never thwarted by protecting our fish.

The destruction of the Fisheries Act by Bill C-38 in 2012 was a scandal, and this repairs it.