Bill C-21 (Historical)

Red Tape Reduction Act

An Act to control the administrative burden that regulations impose on businesses

This enactment enacts the Red Tape Reduction Act, which establishes controls on the amount of administrative burden that regulations impose on businesses.

Red Tape Reduction Act

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened carefully to my colleague's speech, and I commend her for her passion. She spoke about the issue of red tape for small businesses.

There are two dairy farmers and cheese producers in my riding. When the government announced the Canada-EU agreement on various products, including dairy products, a problem emerged for dairy farmers. Most of the cases involve small family businesses, since the property values sometimes get so out of hand that it is very difficult to transfer small businesses unless it is from one generation to another.

One aspect of the dairy industry, in my riding in particular, and in many regions in Quebec, is that dairy farmers are required to keep producing higher quality milk. When I visited farms in my riding, I was overwhelmed to see how much time farmers spent filling out forms because a cow seemed to be faltering, instead of milking the cows and taking care of the animals' health. They have to make a report every time the dairy animals seem to have a health problem.

On the one hand, the government is requiring better quality dairy products in order to compete with products from the outside, but on the other hand, it is claiming that it will cut the red tape.

I would like my colleague to talk about this persistent contradiction, namely that the government is claiming to cut red tape but then requires more paperwork to ensure we are more or as competitive as the new markets opening up outside Canada.

[Annick Papillon, NDP, Québec, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Saint-Jean for his question. He very clearly explained how contradictory this is.

It is worrisome that Bill C-21 puts so much power in the hands of the president of the Treasury Board, making him an arbiter who can make whatever decisions he chooses when it comes to eliminating regulations. We do not know whether the health and safety of Canadians will be protected.

If the Conservatives really cared about the health and safety of Canadians, they would have explicitly protected the regulations concerning health and safety in the bill. However, that is not what they did, and that is worrisome. This bill is flawed and does nothing to protect the health and safety of Canadians.

These issues must take priority. If not, there will be other incidents like the one that occurred at XL Foods, more controversy over the maritime search and rescue centre in Quebec City and other incidents related to nickel dust, all because we will not have adequate regulations.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House today to debate Bill C-21, An Act to control the administrative burden that regulations impose on businesses.

I hesitantly support this bill. My reticence has nothing to do with the objective of the bill but about the government's reputation of saying one thing and and then failing to abide by its own bills.

I am in favour of the bill for the following reason. The one-for-one rule shows businesses that every time a new administrative burden is placed on them, another will be lifted. That is a start. We are telling businesses that their administrative burden will not grow heavier in the future.

That is why the Liberal Party supports this bill. We sincerely hope that Canadian businesses will not be hindered or penalized by too much red tape. However, much more ambitious measures could have been implemented to help companies reduce their paperwork and administrative workload. Judging by the many bills that the Conservatives have introduced to date, the government is creating more paperwork, not less. We are in favour of this bill, but the government could have been a bit more ambitious. It could have ensured that every time a regulation was imposed, there would be 1.1 or 1.2 times less paperwork.

On the one hand, the government wants to seem co-operative by introducing a bill like this, and on the other hand, its actions show that all it does is keep increasing administrative measures, whether it is through personal income tax measures or through various government programs that never reach their targets.

There are a number of initiatives that would make the administrative process more efficient for businesses and, at the same time, for individuals. For instance, the government should ensure that all the forms that businesses and individuals need are electronically available and that government websites that provide services to the public are more in line with the needs of the public. The information should be easily accessible and the documents should be easy to find and download.

All services that can be provided through the Internet should be available through the various departmental web portals. Businesses should not have to go to several offices or to make several phone calls to obtain documents or information that they need. Since red tape has a negative impact on businesses as it makes them waste time and money, we have to do everything we can to reduce it. Efficiency is paramount for businesses and that is what often makes them successful.

According to a 2013 report from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, 68% of Canadian businesses feel that red tape lowers their productivity significantly. According to the same report, the total cost of regulation to Canadian businesses was estimated at $31 billion in 2012. Those are huge costs and we are just talking about small businesses. Instead, businesses could use that money to raise the wages of employees or to lower the prices of goods and services for Canadians.

As stated in the 2012 recommendations of the Red Tape Reduction Commission, it is important to remove information-sharing barriers related to business across departments. As we know, various forms from various departments often ask for the same information over and over again. A more conciliatory and respectful measure for businesses would be to ask for information only once and to improve the sharing of information across departments. As a result, the government would reduce red tape for businesses and provide an improved and more modern service.

There are ways to respect privacy while providing more streamlined, efficient communication between government agencies. Some administrative procedures are needed, and that is not a problem.

In the vast catalogue of current regulations, some of them could easily be eliminated without any impact. That is where the focus is needed, and in fact that is why the government is not afraid to proceed with Bill C-21. It is aware that there are a bunch of regulations that could be done away with.

However, the government should do more if it really wants to help businesses and individuals and to cut red tape. It should come up with a plan that is much more ambitious and comprehensive than what is in Bill C-21.

Furthermore, there is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to the client service provided to individuals and businesses. Red tape can be cut, but more efficient service is also needed, since wait times have the same impact on businesses as the administrative burden.

The quality and efficiency of service to individuals and businesses need to be reviewed. For example, with respect to the time it takes to deliver licences and certificates, the priority should be on setting target processing times. In 2012, during consultations between the government and businesses on red tape, businesses felt this was a priority.

The government is also talking about aiming to reduce the number of complaints and to resolve existing complaints more quickly. These improvements are an integral part of the assistance to be provided to businesses — which is completely normal — to make them more efficient and avoid needless delays, whether in terms of red tape or delays in obtaining documents.

If we look at what I have been saying up to now, a simple example would be when the government first was elected. It decided to introduce, as members well know, an income tax credit called the fitness tax credit. It announced it as being a $500 tax credit to families. Everybody was excited. As a parent, I was excited, as well. I was going to get $500 because my kids were going to be involved in a sports program. There was a lot publicity and hoopla surrounding the announcement.

All of a sudden, we realized that it was a $500 tax credit that resulted in $80.00 of actual money in our pockets. However, in order to get that tax credit, our kids had to be enrolled in a sports program, which is perfectly normal. However, the sporting association, whether it was a profitable sporting association or not or if it was a school group, had to provide us with a receipt. It had to keep track of the money, which is totally fine. It needed to have a certificate number, an attestation number, then be able to print out the receipts and balance their books. Most of those sporting organizations took two to three years to provide an adequate receipt so we were able to receive a measly $500 non-refundable tax credit. Most of the parents in areas where they had difficulty paying their bills were unable to take advantage of this because these tax credits were non-refundable. The non-profit organizations, even the ones that were profit-oriented like sports camps or privatized specialized sporting schools, were unable to generate the proper receipts that were returned by the tax department.

This is one example where the government, while introducing an initiative to reduce taxes, increased the administrative burden for all individuals involved.

Then the government also came out with the public transit tax credit, which again, was a great initiative on paper. However, even the large transport companies were unable to generate receipts. They had to change their software. They had to ensure the receipts were issued in the proper format. They went to an electronic format. My kids pay for their bus passes electronically, but they have to sit there and wait for a receipt, then they have to provide me with the receipt and I have to file it. If they do not find the receipt, then they have to go back to the bus company and ask for a proper receipt.

Again we were stuck with administrative challenges. Perhaps the government only added one extra line on the income tax return, but it created all sorts of paperwork for the people having to respond to the criteria the government implemented.

When it comes to other things, I can give a whole bunch of examples from the Income Tax Act. Any professional accountant will tell us that the Income Tax Act has grown by more than 20% in just the last five to six years. If we look at the size of the Income Tax Act, we can see why it is not printed anymore. It is so voluminous it is not even possible to print it.

I sit on the trade committee, and a couple of examples come to mind from there. We are hearing how the government loves to sign free trade agreements, but the biggest complaint is that when the goods come in, all of a sudden they are stuck there because of the paperwork. The government says it is open for business for importing and exporting, but the biggest complaints we hear are about goods getting stuck at customs or that goods are having a hard time coming in or getting out.

As one example I sort of laugh at, someone said that if we bring in a pickle, it is pickles. However, if it is pickled pickles or jarred pickles, they are determined to be in a different duty category. By the time the duty rate is decided on, the cost can have increased by 10% or 15% or 20%. Sometimes fresh pickles expire in terms of their freshness date, so there is a whole big hoopla around that. This is all an extra administrative burden that the government has created.

There are tons of other examples. We heard about the paperwork and lack of proper scheduling when the government tried to get grain shipped across the country throughout the winter. Other departments that I am not an expert on also have administrative burdens that we need to deal with.

Earlier I saw the former immigration minister in the House. When we export our services to certain countries, we need to get visas. Conversely, my colleague from Markham, the immigration critic, cited the fact that if someone wants to bring in labourers from Mexico, there are tons of problems. They are asked for their passports and they are not given back their passports. There are a whole bunch of problems when it comes to getting visas and work permits, whether it is to go or to come back.

These are all things that businesses have to deal with. Sometimes the fact that they only need a temporary worker for a temporary amount of time just defeats the purpose of getting someone, and the owners end up having to work 20- and 30-hour days, if that is possible.

The government says it is going to reduce one administrative burden before it puts in a new one. However, has anyone here ever decided to automate their bills? It is great. Now we do not get our bills in the mail anymore, but we get an email. Now we have an email added to the rest of our emails. We do not know if they are good or bad emails because there is so much spam that we may not be sure if it is a legitimate email or not.

However, let us assume we get the proper email. Now we want to get our bank statement. We have to log on. We have to make sure we log on with the right password, with exactly the right number of upper-case and lower-case letters and the right alphanumeric numbers. Once we have logged on, there is a security password and then a security question to determine if we are the proper person. Then we are logged on.

We look at our statement online and decide to print it. Then we realize that our printer is not attached or has not been downloaded or has run out of toner. Maybe we realize the kids have taken all our paper, so we have no paper. It used to take half a second to open an envelope and find our bank statement, but all of a sudden it now takes a lifetime. It takes forever.

This is what the government is doing. It is doing the same thing big business is doing: transferring the administrative burden. I just hope the government is cognizant of that fact.

I am hoping we can work toward getting the bill into committee. We are going to vote in favour of it to get it out of the House at second reading and into committee, where we will see if we can improve it. Based on our experience with this government, we have not seen much openness to improving bills or accepting amendments, but we will see. That is why we work in this place. We try to make it a better place.

One more area I would like to also get onto the record is this. The CRA has gotten its act together for a few things, and as an accountant I have to admit that, but one of the areas where it is still having difficulty is with respect to businesses that have non-resident employees. In that case, employers have to open separate non-resident accounts, which have nothing to do with their corporate account. They have to deal with a lot of paperwork in terms of withholding. They have to send in the paperwork to tell the CRA that they are withholding. They may not have a withholding tax, but because they have promised to withhold, they have to withhold at a certain rate. That rate may change based on the country the person who has been subcontracted is doing business in. The rate also depends on the tax treaty and the type of service. Then if the business is one day late in making that withholding payment, they are stuck having to pay a fee, even though they may be expecting a refund elsewhere.

Therefore, with respect to the non-resident aspects, the CRA is still lacking in certain areas. I would like the committee to study some of the issues with respect to the CRA, because that is one of the big complaints we get.

In conclusion, the Liberal Party will support the bill, which is intended to limit the administrative burden that regulations impose on businesses. However, we believe that this is just one small step in the right direction and that it provides very little to businesses. The bill is fine in itself, but it is incomplete.

I call on the government to commit to helping Canadian businesses by instituting additional provisions, and I urge them to consolidate the possible administrative changes that could improve service to businesses. I also believe it would be worthwhile to review all regulations imposed on businesses and individuals to ensure that each regulation makes sense.

Each small step toward reducing paperwork will have a real impact on the productivity and efficiency of Canadian businesses. We need to put ourselves in the shoes of small business owners, who constantly have to fill out forms and often run into red tape. We need to streamline the entire process and make it much more efficient.

[Lynne Yelich, Conservative, Minister of State (Foreign Affairs and Consular)]

Mr. Speaker, I think the member has a great deal to offer with this legislation. He has cited a lot of good examples showing why we need changes made to the regulations, because it is a burden.

I found his comments on computers and passwords interesting because I too am frustrated with trying to access my receipts and bills. I find it all frustrating. However, lately I also had quite an incident over bills that come in the mail as well, so I am not sure if Canada Post is a good option either.

That said, I believe that the member has good things to offer, so I am surprised he did not mention the interprovincial barriers that are also causing small and medium-sized enterprises a great deal of grief. The hon. member could look to the big picture, as we are. The industry minister's next challenge is to try to sit down with the provinces and see where we can start cutting red tape between borders. I would like to ask the member if he has any suggestions on that to kick off what I think will be good legislation for breaking down some of the interior barriers, because he did mention some areas that he feels are good with respect to this kind of legislation.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, that is a good question from the member. I want to thank her for it.

I do not know where to begin. One of the first things small businesses require is a harmonized tax system, not just the sales tax system that we now have pretty well in all provinces across Canada. There are still some issues with Quebec, but it is getting there. Harmonized sales tax and corporate tax and tax on individuals are all items that help small businesses.

Interprovincial barriers are a further issue. I am on the trade committee. When I was on the finance committee, one of our first recommendations was always with respect to interprovincial barriers. The government should be bringing down interprovincial barriers aggressively. This issue should not even have to be mentioned at the trade committee, because it should be a fait accompli.

We just tabled a report with respect to Canada and Europe, and there was no mention made by the government members or the NDP that we should bring down interprovincial barriers. The only party that mentioned it in the supplementary report was the Liberal Party, and I am the only member of the Liberal Party who is on the committee.

Bringing down the interprovincial barriers is probably the best initiative we can have, because if we do not do that, it is almost impossible for this country to be more efficient and more productive or to be able to take advantage of some of the free trade agreements that the government has signed.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I will be supporting the bill too because lots of the individuals and businesses in my riding complain about red tape. However, there are also groups that are not small businesses that have to cope with a lot of red tape issues.

For example, an organization in my riding called Ateliers bon débarras does social reintegration work with young people. They used to apply for funding from the skills link program every year. Now they have decided to stop applying because the red tape got to be overwhelming. It got too complicated. It was a very good program though.

Plenty of other community organizations do not always have the time to apply to programs because they do not have enough people to do it. Just like small businesses, many groups could benefit from this kind of bill.

We saw a great example of increased red tape recently. Bill C-2 on supervised injection sites uses red tape to make sure that this kind of service is not offered. It contains so many criteria that it will be impossible for anyone to create such a centre.

What does my colleague think of all this?

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague, who is from a riding adjacent to mine. Our ridings are both in the eastern part of Montreal, one to the south and the other a little farther north.

I know that the member is new, but she must not get discouraged. It is the government's strategy to make these forms more complicated by demanding more information. Organizations will miss deadlines to submit applications, and then they will be denied funding.

In our office, we tell organizations not to get discouraged. We tell them that we will try to help them as much as possible. My colleague is absolutely right. Many organizations have been denied funding because they submitted their applications too late because of all the paperwork.

I tell people that we will not let the government intimidate us and we will not give up. These organizations do not have a lot of money, and they need it. We will fill out the paperwork.

One thing is for sure though. When the next Liberal government is in power, we will cut red tape and we will help organizations because they deserve it.

[Ted Hsu, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is great to have an accountant in our caucus to explain issues that consume time and resources for small businesses and explain what government could do to improve the situation.

In my riding of Kingston and the Islands, accountants have complained to me about the federal government's closure of a window at the CRA office so that there is no public access now.

I was wondering more generally if my colleague, who is an accountant, has any ideas on how the CRA could be improved to better serve small and medium-sized businesses.

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I can speak from a Quebec point of view. The CRA has improved, but sometimes when a small business is audited by the CRA, after the business goes through hoops and provides all kinds of information to the CRA, a month later the Minister of National Revenue comes calling and the business is subject to a whole bunch of other audits.

That is one of the big problems we have in Quebec, but it has become better. They have been able to talk to each other and it is better.

One area where the CRA can help out is when there is an amount owing. I have seen small businesses that have owed a small amount, maybe less than $1,000, and the government hounds them for collection. The business may be waiting for a refund on something else, such as a corporate tax R and D refund in the thousands of dollars, but meanwhile it may owe a couple of hundred dollars on a penalty charge that is not warranted. A DAS payment may have been late or a form may have been filled out incorrectly and the business is contesting it, but in the meantime the CRA is hitting them with all kinds of penalties and seizing their bank account for a small sum and no one is working to help them get a refund on the other side.

That would be the first thing, collections.

The windows are helpful more for individuals; for businesses, as long as they can get access to their file and get someone on the phone, it is an improvement. I do not think too many businesses need a window. They need to have access to their file and to be able to talk to someone who can take action on the file.

[Tarik Brahmi, NDP, Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would just like to ask my colleague a question, because I know that, in his constituency, there is a very impressive European, and especially Italian, community. Like a lot of Europeans, they are cheese lovers.

I am interested in my colleague's comments. As I stated in a previous question, dairy producers are being asked to fill in more and more paperwork about milk quality and about the safety of their dairy cows, in order to get better quality milk. I am seeing that in my region. Ironically, the government says it wants to reduce red tape. This poses problems for small businesses and farmers with family businesses. They have to fill in more and more documents that they did not have to fill in a year or two ago. Now they have those constraints. Ironically, the government claims to want to reduce the paperwork required from small businesses.

Could my colleague give me his opinion about this contradiction?

[Massimo Pacetti, Liberal, Saint-Léonard—Saint-Michel, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from Saint-Jean for his question.

Actually, it is not just dairy producers. Take the Canadian Food Inspection Agency as an example. Instead of having more inspectors to ensure that our products are safer—the fresher the products, the less danger for people's health—the government is asking people to fill in more paperwork and provide more information. If they can, they will ask for more. These business people will have more difficulties, not fewer.

Instead of helping our producers and our manufacturers, the government is putting obstacles in their path. That is a problem that the government is not really going to solve by claiming to reduce red tape. Instead of being out in the field, the inspectors will be tied to their desks.

[Mike Sullivan, NDP, York South—Weston, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I will be sharing my time with the hon. member forCharlesbourg—Haute-Saint-Charles.

While we support the idea that unnecessary regulatory burdens and regulatory burdens that create unnecessary paperwork are a good thing to remove from small businesses in particular, which as the parliamentary secretary earlier noted are part of the driving force behind job creation in Canada, we are concerned that this notion of somehow magically replacing one-for-one in a bill would do that job without harming health and safety or the economy generally. That is somewhat worrying to us.

We can think of numerous examples of this notion that businesses have a cost associated with regulation. When a new regulation comes forward, that cost must be calculated and a regulation of equivalent cost removed somewhere in the spectrum. We do not know if that regulation needs to be removed from that same type of business, whether it is a small business or a large business. There is no distinction in the bill as to whether or not it would apply only to small business. It would appear that it would apply to anything, including the big oil companies. We could have situations in which regulations for big oil companies, regulations that the Canadian public deem appropriate for the health and safety of Canadians, are somehow going to cost them money and therefore an equivalent regulation would have to be found somewhere else that could be removed if we want to regulate these companies.

I will give the House the example of rail safety. This past year there have been four significant accidents involving trains, one of which caused 47 lives to be lost in Lac-Mégantic. The minister has issued protective directions to, in theory, prevent some of the mechanisms that were in place, but are they regulations? If so, are those regulations going to harm the Canadian economy?

The bill itself suggests that if a regulation harms the Canadian economy, then it cannot be put in place. It says that right in the bill. We cannot amend or remove a regulation dealing with health and safety or the Canadian economy. Which wins, health and safety or the economy? I could not get a straight answer out of the minister when I asked him. We have some serious reservations about the clarity of this legislation.

Another example of the lack of clarity of this legislation is the suggestion that the environment is not something for which we can demand that there be adequate regulation. Right now, Bill C-21 is silent on whether or not regulations affecting the environment would somehow be exempt from this one-for-one rule replacement.

As a result, I need only go so far as to look at the example of the bill itself, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, which was amended in 2012 by the government. Much of the authority of the Minister of the Environment in the act itself was removed. We went from thousands of assessments down to a handful. Even in the promulgation of that bill, a portion of the bill is still empty. That is schedule 2, which theoretically would be promulgated as a regulation by the government. It is still not there.

Schedule 2 is the definition of the components of the environment that would be studied by an environmental assessment. How can we have an environmental assessment if we do not even know what we are studying, and it has to deal with several subparagraphs of the bill? If this legislation takes effect, would the government be prohibited from putting forth regulations under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act that would perhaps harm some big oil company? Would that company then be subject to more regulation, or if those regulations were to come forward, would something equal have to be removed from somewhere else?

It is a staggeringly thin bill. It is only a handful of pages. While that makes it easier to read, it also means there is not a whole lot of meat to it. There is not a whole lot of protection in it.

Essentially, it just says that if we are going to put in a regulation, we have to take one out. It does not say whether that is to small business or large business. It does not say whether that can include the environment. We on this side of the House have some serious reservations about where the government is going with the environment, particularly with the northern gateway pipeline approval that went through just this week against the wishes of many Canadians, including most British Columbians.

We have the labour issues. There are significant regulations in the labour world. The government has already removed some regulations in the labour world in some of its omnibus bills. However, if the government were to receive some suggestions from business that these labour regulations were somehow a burden, it might then be convinced to remove them as a part of the one-for-one deal. The government could put a regulation over here on rail safety, and as a result it would then have to remove one on labour issues from all businesses in Canada.

Does this make any kind of sense? It is so wide open. It boggles the mind. It is apparently left up to the President of the Treasury Board to decide.

I want to give a specific example. In my riding, where regulation is needed, it will show that this regulation could be simple and effective, but it would have a cost for some businesses and a savings for others. Will the cost for some businesses offset the savings for others, or will there need to be a regulation somewhere that needs to be removed?

I come back to the example I gave the other night of the small business in my riding that produces gluten-free bread for consumption by local citizens of the city of Toronto. The advantage this gentleman has is that he is producing it fresh. He is producing it daily, with a wonderful mixture of grains and other ingredients that are gluten free. All of a sudden, his business is starting to dry up, because CFIA, a regulator that is effectively imposing regulations on other businesses, has decided to allow big American companies to ship frozen bread to Toronto. It can be taken out of the freezer and stuck on the shelf to thaw; then a best-before date is stuck on it, and it is sold as fresh.

These businesses have said to this gentleman that the consumer does not need to know that this stuff is not fresh and the consumers should be kept in the dark. We on this side of the House do not think the consumers should be kept in the dark. We think there may be a necessity for a regulation to deal with this issue.

However, let us come back to the bill. How would that regulation work? It would harm the bottom line of the big companies that are selling cheap, imported bread and calling it fresh, even though it is frozen, but it would help the little company, the small businessman in my riding. There is no definition of what a small or large business is. I do not know whether the government would ever impose such a regulation. I do not know whether the government would actually take steps to stop the deception that is being imposed on Canadian consumers by the CFIA.

There is a real-world example of an issue that is crying out for regulation, but with this notion that it has to have a costing to it and the notion that the cost has to be offset by a savings in some other regulation. It boggles the mind how the government, any government, could ever figure this out in a way that is right and just.

We are concerned about the notion of how this one-for-one regulation trade system could somehow be effective and just and done in an effective and transparent way. We are also concerned about whether or not the environment would be harmed, whether or not small businesses would be harmed, and whether or not, in effect, we would be just giving the government licence to start removing regulations from large businesses and oil companies and the like. The track record speaks for itself.

I invite other members to ask me questions.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-21, An Act to control the administrative burden that regulations impose on businesses, be read the second time and referred to a committee.

[The Speaker, Conservative, Andrew Scheer]

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Langley.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to my colleague across the way as he addressed the importance of environmental assessments. I would agree that environmental assessments of any project in Canada must be considered and that we respect these assessments, because they are important. They should be science-based. When an environmental assessment takes place, it is important that we consider it. We do not have to agree with the assessment, but we should show respect for it. It is important that we make decisions based on logic and science.

The reason I bring this up is that the member highlighted the importance of these assessments, and yet, just two days ago, the northern gateway pipeline was referred to. There was an environmental assessment that started over four years ago. There were 1,450 intervenors who spoke, over 9,000 letters and correspondence received, and first nations were consulted. After this environmental assessment was completed, the government considered the report and its recommendations, and the independent judicial body that did this assessment recommended that the northern gateway pipeline go ahead, provided it met 209 criteria. The government has considered this carefully, and, after careful consideration, we have agreed with it.

My question is this. The NDP ideology is that we are going to ignore an environmental assessment like that. When will the NDP recognize science-based environmental assessments and when will their ideology get in the way?