Bill C-17 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act and to make a consequential amendment to another Act

This enactment amends the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act, in particular by repealing the provisions
(a) that authorize the federal minister to delegate any of his or her powers, duties and functions under that Act to the territorial minister;
(b) that exempt projects and existing projects from the requirement of a new assessment when an authorization is renewed or amended and there are no significant changes to the original project as previously assessed;
(c) that establish time limits for assessments; and
(d) that authorize the federal minister to issue binding policy directions to the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Board.
The enactment also amends the Yukon and Nunavut Regulatory Improvement Act by repealing the transitional provision relating to the application of time limit provisions enacted by that Act to projects in respect of which the evaluation, screening or review had begun before that Act came into force but for which no decision had yet been made.

Yukon Environmental and Socio-Economic Assessment Act

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, he did not ask me a question, but restated what I said, and I thank him for doing that.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

I would remind hon. members that when we start using the word “you”, for some reason it starts to proliferate in speeches.

I would also remind members that they are perfectly able, if they wish, during the five-minute period for questions and comments, to pose either a question or a comment.

Questions and comments. The hon. member for Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo.

[Cathy McLeod, Conservative, Kamloops—Thompson—Cariboo, BC]

Mr. Speaker, coming from the province he does, he perhaps knows more than anyone else how important it is to put timelines on the environmental assessment process so that people do not end up waiting five or 10 years and spending enormous amounts of money. Could he speak to the fact that although the government has committed to re-establishing timelines, it will not be in legislation but in policies? Could he maybe speak to how important timelines are and perhaps how a legislative framework is a little stronger than a policy framework for those particular components?

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, that is absolutely true if people are going to invest billions.

We talked about energy east. Through the investment process, $1 billion was spent on a timeline that went on and on, until they finally said there would be no end to spending more money on it, not knowing where it would end. Therefore, it needs timelines. Northern gateway went on for a long time. It got an approval, but then it was cancelled outside of that process.

Timelines and processes are critical for investment. It has really handicapped the resource sector and the oil and gas industry. It needs to be clear in this one to make it work.

[Michael McLeod, Liberal, Northwest Territories, NT]

Mr. Speaker, the member raised several points that caught my interest. First was the need for infrastructure to develop our resources in the north. I am from the Northwest Territories. We have three functioning mines and a number of mines on the horizon. Infrastructure is what really decides whether it is a feasible project. I am glad the member has recognized that.

He also recognized that Yukon is looking a different model when it comes to the regulatory process. We in the Northwest Territories take great pride in our regulatory process. In that process, 50% of the members are indigenous, representing aboriginal governments, and it works well. The timelines are shorter. It allows communities to be more involved.

Could the member talk about the regulatory processes that are different? Maybe he should look at this. Would the member commit to studying that model to see if it is a better model than what he has seen in other places?

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague is absolutely right on infrastructure.

When another colleague and I were on the environment committee, we talked about protected spaces. We had panels with indigenous people from the member's particular area, from the territories. It was interesting how they would suggest that it was great to protect spaces, but that they had to have the right to develop them. That was very interesting in showing how they wanted to deal with their own territories.

I would agree that we need to have a northern strategy. We need to have the infrastructure for it. We need to make it work. There are great resources, and the people there understand them. They understand the environment they live in, and they want to develop resources their way, the right way for them. I think there are great resources and great possibilities.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-17. Bill C-17 is a justice bill, believe it or not. I say this because I believe that, fundamentally, the government is responsible for justice.

How does justice come into Bill C-17? Governments are about making decisions. With every decision to be made, the interests of each group that are impacted by it must be balanced and taken into consideration.

Previously we passed a bill that brought into place the YESAA agreement. The agreement was the process by which decisions would be made on how the resources in the Yukon would be developed. The YESAA was a great piece of legislation, bringing stability and immense development into the region. By all accounts, most people were very happy with it.

Since then, there have been some political decisions made to change YESAA. What is frustrating about this is that there do not seem to be any principles underlying these changes. It would seem that decisions made on one particular project would have underlying principles that would be the same on another project. Those principles would be consistent, fair, and equitable, which all sound like justice issues.

There are four major changes to YESAA that are impacted by Bill C-17. With two of these changes, in particular, I will try to explain the logical inconsistencies that come with this bill.

The first one I am going to talk about is the time limits. When YESAA was developed, a time limit for decisions was put in place. I believe it was 18 months. When an applicant brought forward a project, he or she was guaranteed within 18 months to have a decision. This brought stability and a timeline to the decision. When someone launches an application, until they receive the decision, there is often a lot of activity that goes on. There are a lot of documents and witnesses to be found, all costing money. If there is a decision that has to be made within a specific time frame, that speeds the entire process up and produces a definitive answer in the end.

It was said that time limits were unnecessary because most of the decisions were made in 52 days. The average decision was made in 52 days, making the 18-month time limit irrelevant. The logic was that the time limit was not needed, because the decisions were being made in very short order.

However, the fact that there was a time limit may have been the reason why decisions were made in 52 days. It does not mean that we do not need a time limit. Currently, the time limit is the fundamental reason decisions are being made in a short amount of time. Whether the decision-making was drawn out or sped up, it was beneficial to have a decision made earlier rather than later. At some point the decision was going to have to be made.

If there is no end date, there is no reason why anyone would come to a quicker decision. There would be many incentives to ensure that, if someone did not like the decision that was going to come out, he or she could throw sticks in the wheels. All kinds of things can slow things down. We have seen this over and over again with other projects that have come along. Energy east is a prime example of changing goalposts.

The irony of all this, in saying that the time limits were unnecessary because most decisions were being made in 52 days, is that the opposite logic was being used on the delegation of powers. It was said that we have never needed the time limits, so we should not need to have time limits. As I understand it, the delegation of powers has not necessarily been used ever. It was just there for security purposes, agreeing with the ability for the minister to issue a binding policy directive. That had never been used as well, but it was there to offer security, to offer a definite reason for people to negotiate, because the minister had that backup, that power. If the parties could not come to a decision, if all the interests coming to the table could not come to a decision, the minister could step in. However, it had never been used. On the one side, we had the time limits and on the other side was the minister's directive.

In one instance it was the same people arguing that they had a hammer hanging over their head and in the other instance they said they do not need it because it has never been used. It seems to me that, if we are going to use the logic, we need to have a principle in place for when we make these decisions. From my perspective, the principle would be what we could do to bring stability, predictability, and a reasonable time to decision- making. That is the underlying principle when we put in place these policies like time limits, like the ability of the minister to issue directives, like the minister's ability to delegate authority. That is the underlying principle. We need to come to timely and efficient decisions so that we can encourage development in the north.

I have been to the north a number of times. I have not make it to Yukon, but I made it to Nunavut and to the Northwest Territories. I have been to northern B.C. and I understand that the landscape in northern B.C. is very similar to the Yukon, so I can definitely imagine what Yukon is like. I enjoy spending time in northern Canada. I consider myself to be from northern Canada, although I do still live in the boreal forest in northern Alberta, so I do not have the rugged landscapes like there are in the north.

I know that bringing development to northern Canada is essential for all the Canadians who live in northern Canada. Why? It is because this is what puts food on the table. When we are discussing these policy points—time limits, renewal or amendment projects, or policy directions, or delegation of power—they are fairly abstract things, but the reason we are discussing them is that we want to ensure that people who live in northern Canada can put food on the table. That is what we have to remember when we are discussing this.

In order for that to happen, we need to have resources coming into the communities, and how does that happen? It happens in the free exchange of products, the free exchange of ideas to the free market, and that happens when one party has something to offer to another party. What does northern Canada have to offer to the world? It has natural resources, diamonds, gold, forestry products, oil. All these things make our lives significantly better.

Looking at the surfaces in the House, I would say 30% to 40% of them are made out of wood. That wood started out in the forest, perhaps in northern Canada. We paid someone to cut down the trees. We paid someone to cut the trees into lumber. We paid someone to carve the beautiful carvings that we see all around us. All of that put food on the table for some families in Canada. All of that put a roof over the head of some people in Canada. That is what we are discussing when we are discussing the YESAA bill.

We want to ensure that the people of Yukon can get the beautiful resources they have in northern Canada, the forestry products, gold, and oil, to the world where it is needed, and thereby put food on the table for their families.

I have several constituents who regularly travel to Yukon. They are involved in gold mining. I have talked to several of them, and I am not sure if they make a lot of money gold mining but it looks like they have a lot of fun. The very fact they can go up there to make that money or mine that gold—as I said, I do not think they make a lot of money, because spending a lot of money to find a lot of money is essentially what it involves—spurs activity. It ensures that hotels are full, that restaurants are busy, that the heavy-duty equipment dealer is selling mining equipment, that the mechanic has a job, and that the gas stations are busy. Why is that? It is because people are searching for resources and helping other fellow human beings enjoy their lives.

How do they do that? They do it by obtaining the natural resources we can use to build houses, heat our homes, build automobiles and cellphones, all of the things that make our lives here in southern Canada much better. Each of us carries a cellphone in our pocket, and many of us could not survive without it. At least, we think we cannot. Every piece of that cellphone started in the ground somewhere.

[MaryAnn Mihychuk]

Ping, ping.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

The chair of the indigenous and northern affairs committee is reminding me that my cellphone went off at committee, much to my embarrassment. She continually reminds me of that.

Nonetheless, a lot lithium, the thing that runs our batteries, comes from northern Canada. The rare earth metals used in our cellphones come from northern Canada. I was recently in the Northwest Territories airport in Yellowknife, and when people are in the security line, they can see a whole collection of minerals on the other side of the glass. It was fascinating to see copper, nickel, and gold, all of the things used to build everything we use.

If I look around here, I can see copper wire being used for our headsets, to make the lights turn on, for the microphone system, or for charging my phone. All that copper started out in rural Canada somewhere in the ground and had to be mined. When we are talking about YESAA, we need the natural resources in northern Canada to continue to live the life we do. We need those resources to have the cellphone we carry in our pocket, which we all know improves our lives incredibly.

One of the things I really enjoy about my iPad is the fact that I can FaceTime with my children. This particular job takes me away from my family a lot of times, and I know that without the modern technology of Facebook and my iPad, I would not see my children as often as I do. Because of my iPad, I am able to FaceTime with my children. If it were not for mines in northern Canada, northern Alberta, or in northern B.C., we would not have the copper, the rare earth metals, all those things that build our iPads.

Western civilization is truly astounding.

[MaryAnn Mihychuk]

So is your speech.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

The chair of my committee is laughing at me, but I am dead serious about this.

The reason our lives are so incredible is the free exchange of ideas and products. Not only does that allow us to have incredible things like iPads, but it also allows us to live in every part of the world.

Northern Canada, in particular, is a very cold place. In order to survive in northern Canada, we need to ensure we have the resources it takes to heat our homes and the resources it takes to build those homes. When it comes to YESAA, we need to ensure that we can get the resources out of the ground, off of the landscape, to the refineries, to the sawmills, to the diamond cutters, or wherever it might be, so that all of us can have a better life. It is absolutely critical.

Why would we be changing the process to make it less likely that we can attract business from the around the world? We are in competition with the world. Lo and behold, we have diamonds in the Northwest Territories, which is a great thing, but perhaps there are diamonds in other parts of the world. We must consider this and ensure that we are able to get our diamonds out of the ground and to market as cheaply or cheaper than our competition around the world—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Anthony Rota]

I believe we have a point of order from the hon. member for Yukon.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, I am enjoying the speech, the treatise on western civilization and diamonds around the world, but we do not have diamond mines in the Yukon at the moment. However, on a point of relevance, I would appreciate it, and Yukoners would appreciate it, if we could concentrate more on this bill that would enhance mining.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Anthony Rota]

As I often mention when relevance is brought up, I have heard some speeches that go off on what I think are tangents, but hon. members have this amazing amount of ingenuity and manage to bring it around. Therefore, I will leave it with the hon. member to continue his speech. He only has about a minute left, and I am sure he will bring it around.

[Arnold Viersen, Conservative, Peace River—Westlock, AB]

Mr. Speaker, in conclusion, I think we need a system of principles that are used across the country to ensure we have stable time limits for decision-making, complete justice when it comes to decision-making, and we need to ensure that the resources of the Yukon can be developed for the benefit of all Canadians.