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

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it was great to hear from my colleague, the member for Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa. Hopefully I have pronounced that correctly. I always struggle with it. This House has some interesting riding names; many of them I avoid saying. Again, that speaks to the fact that in this House we have many members who have a great deal of technical knowledge who bring it to the House in order to explain their viewpoints on the value of a particular bill, either based on the clause-by-clause assessment they bring to it or because they have, perhaps, concerns of principle and differ on principle with the direction the government is taking.

I am pleased to rise on Bill C-17, an act to amend the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act and to make a consequential amendment to another act. Obviously I do not entirely agree with all of the content, but I want to bring up a few points, perhaps, on clause-by-clause issues that I have with the bill, the intent of the bill, and the possible consequences of it.

With that in mind, I do have a Yiddish proverb. Many members know I care much for the Yiddish language, especially the proverbs, and this one is “A fool says what he knows and a wise man knows what he says.” What I hope to live up to in this speech is very much the latter instead of the former, so judge me based on when I am done at the end of it.

I think the bill again represents the positive and sunny attitude the government has taken on, the sunny agenda of just taking the entire accomplishments of the previous government and wrecking them, whether it is the economy, the low-tax environment, the success in the economy in more general terms and also specific sectors that did so well, and then the legislative initiatives that actually made it easier to create jobs, made it easier to develop an approach, and gave us the certainty that if we put a project forward, we were going to get an answer, a yes or a no, and some type of content so that we could decide as a shareholder, a company owner, or a worker whether it was worth pursuing or not. That simply does not exist anymore if we go ahead with this particular piece of legislation.

Revoking everything that our government has done is not a positive agenda. I want to make that point, because that is consistently what I see here. A bill that was passed by a private member in this House before, the member for Foothills, was torn apart by the government.

Again, this is another continuation of that positive sunny attitude, and I say that with a great deal of sarcasm in this House.

It is typical of a government, I feel, that has no clear or credible plan, whether it comes to the economy or whether it comes to ensuring jobs are created by the private sector. It does not really have a plan. We saw that in the budget as well. It just went all over the place. It did not have a focus to it, and now we are spending a Monday debating a bill that would make it more difficult to grow the economy in the Yukon.

That is my personal belief, of course. The member for Yukon is here, and he sits on the opposite benches, which is most unfortunate, because I do appreciate his chairing the House procedures committee and I have been there many times now. I am so glad we are able to have a debate here, he and I, and that he can listen to me debate Bill C-17 during daytime hours as opposed to midnight hours.

Again, I really do believe that Bill C-17 would make it more difficult for companies, workers, and shareholders to move forward with some type of understanding that they will have the project assessed in a reasonable amount of time and have a decision rendered upon it.

One of the reasons I have for opposing the bill is that it is a step backwards for the self-determination of Yukoners. It takes away northern control over northern resources.

Members will disagree with me, but I still think it is that “Ottawa knows best” attitude. I feel that is the vein in this bill. As someone from Alberta, representing a constituency full of people from all across Canada who have made Alberta their home, who have chosen Alberta, we have this strong attitude that Ottawa has this kind of vibe that it knows best. They come to our city, to our province, pretending they can fix all of our problems. The best thing they could ever do is simply stay out of our province. We can handle things ourselves. I think many people in the territories and the other provinces would feel the same way.

Another reason to oppose the bill is that it introduces unnecessary delays and a potential for delays. I think it's the potential for delays, the uncertainty that the bill continues to create and aggravate, that is far more critical to this debate.

I will bring forward my experience. I actually worked for the ministry for sustainable resource development in Alberta, which took care of fish and wildlife, lands, water, biodiversity, forestry, so it was very much the ministry responsible for an entire landscape of Alberta and the industrial development happening on it, whether people like it or not. I know there are many members in different parts of this House who do not like industrial development. They do not like timber. They do not seem to like oil and gas. They do not seem to like the products and the fruits of the labour of individuals who create wealth, and then we get to put up buildings such as this. We get to renovate buildings. We get to grow the economy. The jobs created are created, again, by the private sector. They allow us to create that wealth and to trade and find opportunities to meet each other's needs.

I also think, as a last reason to oppose this, that it puts Yukon at a competitive disadvantage with the rest of Canada because, again, the system of approvals will differ from some of the provinces to some of the territories, and I think that is an error. I think, as much as possible—because companies in Canada operate throughout all jurisdictions; the really large ones are interested in large energy or mining infrastructure projects—we should ensure that they have the same rules apply to them wherever they go because it is much simpler for their technical staff, the workers who are there, to understand the rules and make sure they can comply with them.

Bill C-17 shows, yet again, a deep disdain for natural resources and energy workers. This is something that many constituents of mine have expressed, through email, in phone calls, and at open houses that I have had. There is this continued kind of dislike. Being in mining and energy development is just not trendy or, as was in the budget, innovative. The word “innovative” was used 212 times in the budget. I think “small business” was used six times. It is a supercluster of innovation. I do not know what these buzzwords in the budget really mean. They were just slammed together. I think it was called a “word salad” at one point.

The resource industry and the mining industry are some of the most innovative industries. The workers there spend years upon years getting a technical education that allows them to develop these resources responsibly, which is what they want to do, very much. They are hearing that the government is making it more difficult to develop mining and energy projects, that there is even just the potential for extra difficulty. There is the potential for projects not being approved within 18 months or 24 months, or for being denied with no explanation. It concerns them, because some of them have put two years of their life into trying to find a way to meet the approval requirements. Now they may be faced with potential changes again, and there might be more changes down the line that the government may want to make.

In the budget we saw changes to some of the ways mining tax credits and the exploration tax credits work. All of those things add up. It has a cumulative impact on industry. We always hear about cumulative impacts on the environment, but the decisions being made by the government are having a cumulative impact on industry. It will affect jobs, GDP growth, and child poverty rates. The government is paying itself through these metrics that it will have to meet some day. Again, it likely will not be able to.

Without clear and predictable timelines, it is impossible for companies and their workers, as I said, to plan anything. We have had the pipeline debate in Canada. I know there were some approvals that the government went through, but there was also cancellation of the northern gateway. That had a big impact on Calgary. It had a big impact on companies, and the certainty they had that a process that was followed to a T by companies would actually end with an approval and the jobs that come with it. Even though there was an approval, it did not mean the company would be able to go ahead and build, if they thought the government would change the rules and arm the opponents of the project with extra judicial or legal tools to try to delay the project. All of these things matter.

As we have seen over the past weeks, many international companies are leaving Calgary, leaving their head offices, selling off their assets, and basically abandoning Alberta, because they do not feel they can make a good enough return.

The energy industry in Alberta, western Canada, and in the northern territories and Yukon is still hurting. I am still hearing from my constituents who are still considering work outside of Canada or in one of the eastern provinces, because they just cannot find work in the sector that they have trained for their entire lives. Alberta spent a generation trying to find the requisite human resources, the workers who we desperately needed to fill the jobs. It was the same for Yukon. People from the Yukon travelled to Calgary. I used to work in human resources; we had people travelling.

Companies were actively recruiting workers in Calgary with amazing compensation packages, just trying to bring them to Yukon and trying to convince them that it was worth taking two, three, or four years making incredible pay, making an incredible contribution to the economy there. Now it is not happening anymore.

I believe Bill C-17 will only make things worse. What the Liberal government is doing through this specific piece of legislation is just spreading that joy and sunny ways all across western Canada and into the north now. We have seen what it has done to the economy in western Canada with two consecutive budgets. There is a pittance, in terms of job creation. There is no business confidence that good times will return. There is no certainty in the regulatory environment that a project put forward today will receive approval within 18 or 24 months.

That is what many of these companies want. It is not just for the companies, not just for the shareholders, but it is for the workers. If individuals are going to spend two years of their life trying to meet the regulatory requirements of the government, that is two years of what I would call red tape.

One person's red tape is another person's responsible accountability, but two years, three years, four years? What about the Mackenzie gas pipeline? What about the millions of hours of worker time spent on a project that never ever went ahead?

I am not a biologist. I am also, thankfully, not a lawyer, with all due respect to the lawyers in this House. I am just speaking a bit from my time working for the minister of sustainable resource development, because it informs how I view the bill specifically.

That department took care of public lands, grazing leases, forestry, mining, energy leases, fish and wildlife, wildlife management areas, wildlife protection, and provincial parks. It took care of forestry, the economics, the leases, the public lands associated with it, the regulations governing the industry. It was what I would call almost like a hodgepodge of different types of sectors of what the government is so-called responsible for, setting the rules of the game for different companies and different individuals who want to participate in it.

I will be the first to say that I am a city boy. I have lived all my life in big cities. I was born in a large city, Danzig, in Poland. My parents came to Montreal. That was the city I grew up in. I have lived in Calgary. I have lived in Edmonton. I have lived in Ottawa. I have lived in many great, large urban centres, but working for this department gave me a much greater appreciation for the breadth of activity across Alberta and the breadth of industrial activity and what industrial activity actually means to the people on the ground, to the jobs, the families, the incomes that it creates. How can government make it simpler for industrial activity to happen in a responsible way?

I do not think Bill C-17 accomplishes that. I think it takes a step backward. I think it makes it more complicated to meet the requirements that the government might support. Again, it is a lack of confidence. There is a general lack of confidence with people here that this government actually has it right, that it actually knows what it is doing.

We look at things like the economics of development, the certainty of decision-making, that when one puts forward one's project, it would be approved, or not approved, with very clear reasons why it would not go ahead.

Many workers I speak to, energy workers and mining workers, take an immense amount of pride in the work they do, and it goes from worker to management. It really does not matter. Even the families take pride in this too. More often than not, what they are looking for is ensuring that the industrial footprint of the projects they are connected to, they are working on, becomes kind of exemplary. We could almost think of that as a postcard. This is how we do development.

That is true for Alberta. That is true for Saskatchewan. That is true for every single western province. It is true for everywhere in Canada. Nobody goes out there with the intention of wrecking the environment. That is just the point. I think we have it inverted in Bill C-17. I think it comes with the presupposition that industrial development is automatically wrong and we should not move ahead with it.

That is fundamentally an issues of principles. That is not how it works. It should not be thought of in that way. I think, with the vast majority of energy workers, mining workers, what they are looking forward to is having the best possible stewardship rules that they can apply, and the certainty that their projects will go ahead or not, but with very clear reasons why they cannot go ahead, so they can try to meet them in the future. They do not need the government hanging over their shoulder telling them what to do every which way. They can do it themselves. They are the experts in the field. They are the ones who accumulate decades of traditional knowledge on the ground, working with aboriginal groups, working with different companies, because they may switch companies as well. They are also working in those communities, getting a better understanding of the lay of the land and the impacts that industrial development will have.

Albertans have fought ardently for that good stewardship concept. The minister I used to work for was known as a kind of right-wing environmentalist. At the time, Ted Morton was well respected in the environmental community, because he did quite a bit of work on land-use management on the forestry industry side, but especially on fish and wildlife, ensuring that the resource was well looked after, but that the rules of the game were consistent and certain. Consistency and certainty were the main things that both the political staff and the civil servants were responsible for, and again, with Bill C-17, it worries me that we just may not see that.

On Bill C-17, just to refer back to a few points I made before and why I think it is an error and why I oppose a great deal of the bill, I think it does take away northern independence. I do think it is an attack on natural resources development, mining, energy, and forestry, potentially. I think it does add uncertainty into the review process. I think the removal of the timelines and the option for exempting renewals fits well with the ongoing narrative on that side.

Introducing unnecessary delays and uncertainty into our regulatory process is not the right way to go when we are trying to induce or convince companies that they should be creating jobs. We are creating quite the opposite. Multinational companies are very much leaving Canada or leaving the jurisdictions in Canada where they are working right now because they do not think they can earn a return on their investment.

Many domestic companies, good Alberta-based, B.C.-based, Yukon-based companies, which would like to take a chance and be entrepreneurial and take a risk, are uncertain what is going to happen. These rules change today and perhaps the rules will change again in a year or two years down the line. If innovation is the name of the game, then maybe we should call all these mining projects superclusters and just call it the supercluster diamond mine, the supercluster energy development, the supercluster pipeline. If the name of the game is the buzzword, then maybe they could meet it if they are just told which buzzwords to use.

Also, I fear the impact to the economy. Bill S-6, the original bill that made those amendments, was reasonable. I was not a member at the time, but I remember some of those debates and I have gone through Hansard to see what leading members of the business community in Yukon were saying about it at the time.

I have an article I want to refer to before I go into those comments from the debates at the time. It is called “Feds table legislation to repeal parts of Bill S-6” on June 10, 2016. We are debating the bill today in April, so obviously this was not a huge rush in terms of coming up for debate, but one of the comments I want to refer to here says, “he claimed his government would 'not be a barrier' if the new Liberal government did repeal the four provisions”. This was Yukon Premier Darrell Pasloski, a good name of eastern or central European descent. The article went on to say:

...during a campaign visit to Whitehorse last fall, former prime minister Stephen Harper said it was the territorial government that requested the changes to the assessment act laid out in Bill S-6.

The Yukon government has also spoken out against [this particular piece of legislation] more recently, after oil-and-gas exploration company Northern Cross filed for a judicial review of the board’s decision to refer its Eagle Plain drilling project to a higher level of assessment.

Now we can differ perhaps on these quotes being related accurately, but it shows there was industrial development and energy development going on and now uncertainty is starting to get into the whole process: judicial uncertainty, regulatory uncertainty, and now perhaps legislative uncertainty is being added onto it.

Bill S-6 was the final legislative step in the previous Conservative government's plan to approve northern regulatory regimes. I do not think we can talk about Bill C-17 without talking about Bill S-6, because from 2011 to 2013, Yukon was rated the single most desirable place in the world for mining companies to conduct business. Bill S-6 was improving upon that goal because Yukon had started to fall. Other jurisdictions were catching up. It was not so much that they were falling behind, but other jurisdictions were making the necessary amendments.

I will finish by mentioning those people who were for Bill S-6 at the time. Samson Hartland, executive director of the Yukon Chamber of Mines, described the introduction of time limits as “probably the most important aspect of this bill to our membership”.

At the time also David Morrison, president and CEO of Yukon Energy Corporation, agreed:

Having screening processes that don't have defined timelines, and strictly defined timelines, makes it very difficult for people who are investing millions and hundreds of millions of dollars.

Clynton Nauman, president and CEO of Alexco Resource Corporation, also told the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, Environment and Natural Resources on September 30, 2014:

The current uncertainty has had a negative impact on our ability to efficiently plan and operate our business, and by extension, it impairs the competitiveness of Yukon as a jurisdiction to assert certainty in the mine development and production process.

This is a very important matter in very many important matters, especially as the PROC committee filibuster continues. I look forward to seeing the chair, the member for Yukon, there at midnight hopefully next time. As long as he wishes to continue, I will be there participating in those debates.

I move:

Motion

That the debate be now adjourned.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I apologize.

The relevance is that the investment climate in our country is critical and the environmental processes that govern the development and implementation of projects are very important. That is why we made changes to the act via Bill S-6. We put time limits on the review process. I know the environmental industry wants no time limits on the review process. I made the point. It is absolutely true that all projects these days are built with the finest environmental technology in place right now. Therefore, to spend an inordinate amount of time reviewing what we already knew was what our government changed in the act.

Regarding this act, we exempted a project from reassessment when an authorization was renewed or amended unless there had been a significant change to the project. Changes always are being made to resource projects. Plants are sometimes refurbished, boilers are changed, and these can be considered as routine maintenance or modifications. If these are subject to endless litigation or process, just when a company is modifying a plant in a manner that is not significant in terms of its environmental performance, that modification should be exempt from a review process. The federal minister still had a role to provide binding policy direction to the board, so the federal government was involved.

The last thing we did under Bill S-6, which was very important, was we gained the ability to delegate the federal minister's powers, duties, or functions under the act to the territorial government.

I spoke earlier, as a person who had actually worked in industry, how the investment climate could be negatively affected by different levels of government coming in and out of the process. We know there is a separation of powers in the environment. Migratory birds, for example, are clearly within the purview of the federal government. Wildlife is provincial, and so on. However, there is a very strong overlap between those, and often a proponent has to repeat exactly the same environmental assessment for two levels of government. That costs money, time, and that kind of regulatory uncertainty has the potential to thwart investment. Make no mistake, capital, in the modern world, is very mobile. Capital looks where it can best be spent, and investors look for regulatory certainty.

I am very pleased that in my home province of Manitoba we finally have a business-friendly, aggressive, Conservative government. The mining industry views Manitoba now as the place in North America to develop mines. Not only do we have high environmental standards, we have a business-friendly government. We have rich mineral resources. Unlike the Liberal government of Ontario and other governments across the country, Manitoba has some of the lowest hydro rates in North America. That is a recipe for success.

Going back to Bill C-17, what it would do is reverse the good work that was done under our government. I would like to move an amendment to the amendment. I move:

That the amendment be amended by adding the following: “and that the committee report back no later than June 19, 2017”.

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

Mr. Speaker. I rise on a point of order. I have been wrestling with myself on this point of order, but now that there are just five minutes remaining I wonder if the member plans to address the bill we are debating today, Bill C-17, the Yukon environmental and socio-economic assessment act. As nostalgic as we all are for the destruction of environmental laws under Bill C-38 back in 2012, I really wonder if the member has some views on the current bill.

[Robert Sopuck, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to speak to Bill C-17. The background leading to Bill C-17 is as follows. The federal government's role in the management of lands and resources in Yukon was devolved to the Government of Yukon in 2003. The Government of Canada maintains the responsibility for outlining the environmental regulations there. The Yukon Environmental Socio-economic Assessment Board was established under the final agreement.

Our Bill S-6 was intended to make, and did make, the northern regulatory regimes more consistent with those in the south to attract investment and develop economic opportunities. Bill S-6 was a very good bill. It put time limits on the review process. It exempted a project from reassessment when an authorization is renewed or amended, unless there was a significant change to the project. It gave the federal minister the ability to provide binding policy direction to the board, and very importantly, the ability to delegate the federal minister's powers, duties, or functions under the act to the territorial government.

I became a member of Parliament in 2010. For the first term of our government I was on both the fisheries committee and the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development. For most of that time, I was the only member of Parliament of any political party who was on both of those committees. I was very privileged to get a view into our environmental policy-making and I participated fully in many of the changes that we made. Many of the changes that we made improved the environmental process, cleaned up a number of very bad pieces of environmental legislation, improved the potential for economic development, and had absolutely no negative effects on the environment. We amended the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act to remove duplication.

We changed the Navigable Waters Protection Act into the Navigation Protection Act. The Navigable Waters Protection Act was a particularly egregious act. It was a good act when it was written back in the 1800s when Canada depended on water navigation to a very great extent, and blocking navigable waters simply was not an option for our growing economy. However, over the course of decades and years, judicial interpretation of what was a navigable water kept growing smaller until intermittent streams were considered navigable waters. There are those who have a strong interest in stopping economic development. My colleague opposite inadvertently used the phrase “environmental industry”. I think there is an industry that has been developed that is doing very well financially in stopping projects. The old Navigable Waters Protection Act was a particularly bad act because it forced municipalities to spend inordinate amounts of money to build bridges over tiny intermittent water bodies.

We also changed the Fisheries Act quite dramatically. As a fisheries biologist, I was very much involved with the changes to the Fisheries Act.

These examples that I am citing are germane to the topic of the Yukon situation because the regulatory regime of a country is critical to the economic development of that country. Modern projects must be environmentally sound, and indeed they are, and at the same time investment must be encouraged.

Revising the Fisheries Act, 2012, which was our Fisheries Act, was one of the current federal government's platform policies. The fisheries committee had extensive hearings. I am still on the fisheries committee as the vice-chair. We had weeks of hearings where people who were opposed to the changes we made to the act wanted the act to go back to the way it was, the old way, where basically the entire country was considered fish habitat, and the Fisheries Act was able to be used by the environmental industry and environmental lawyers to block, hold up, or otherwise stop economic development.

I have a strange view of the environment. I believe that when we talk about environmental policy, we should actually talk about ecology, nature, landscapes, and water, because presumably that is what it is all about. However, all I hear mostly from environmental advocates these days, especially those on the Liberal left, is process, process, process.

In our Fisheries Act hearings, over and over again we asked this of the ones who were so excited about the changes we made to the act. Since the act was changed in 2012, we asked them if they could point to any fish populations that had been decimated or affected by the changes we had made. Not a person could come up with any examples, but they sure were mad at the process. Their metric for success of an act was how many investigations there were, how many charges there were, and how many processes there were. The fish and the environment actually became an afterthought.

The changes we made in the Yukon Act included putting in time limits, no reassessment unless the project was significantly changed, the federal minister binding policy direction, and delegate the federal minister's powers to the territorial government.

When I was an environmental director at a paper mill, I remember being involved with a change in the direction of our mill. Multiple bodies were regulating the environmental assessment we were doing. We never knew which level of government would step in since it was optional. They would sit in the weeds, we would do the environmental assessment, and we would ask what they thought. They would say that they were not sure, that we should keep doing what we were doing. This kind of uncertainty has a very direct and negative effect on investment. It is great for lawyers, the billable times just keep going up and up. However, with respect to communities, people, livelihoods, it is the worst thing that could happen.

When I was a young biologist in the seventies, and right out of university, one of my very first jobs was being part of the environmental assessment of the Mackenzie Valley pipeline. It was dream job for a kid out of university. I was able to play around with fish, fly around in helicopters, and sample rivers and lakes in remote parts of the Mackenzie Valley. It was an absolutely marvellous experience. This was back in the days of the Berger commission. I remember the team of which I was a part. We sampled every waterway in the Mackenzie Valley, every tributary, all the lakes along the proposed pipeline route. We flew the pipeline route, wrote copious reports, and took a lot of water and fish samples, all the usual kinds of fun stuff that field biologists get to do.

The report was written and the Berger commission was held. At that point, oil and gas prices were not too bad. We had an oil embargo, so there was a certain urgency for Canada to develop our natural resources. The government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau of the day ultimately turned the project down after all that work.

Interestingly, the project was resurrected in the 1990s again. Gas prices were up. I think it was $15 a thousand cubic feet. It was a high price and they wanted to see if we could get the Mackenzie Valley pipeline going again. The proponents for that project in the 1990s had to do exactly the same environmental assessment that we did in the 1970s. Nothing had changed. The rivers and lakes were exactly the same. There had been no development, no economic expansion, nothing, yet what we did in the 1970s was redone all over again for a number of years.

As time went on, the price of natural gas declined dramatically and the project became uneconomical. Delay and uncertainty kill projects. Now we have no Mackenzie Valley pipeline and we have 15 or 20 communities that are in dire economic straits. We know how to build pipelines safely. They are all built in an environmentally sound way. It is because they are so good that when a spill actually occurs, then it is a big event because it is an extremely rare event.

There is a fundamental misunderstanding of modern economic development, especially resource projects. All projects are built with state-of-the-art environmental technology. The implication when one goes into an environmental review process is we either do this review process or the environment will be destroyed, which is complete and utter nonsense.

Again, in my own experience managing a waste water treatment plant at a paper mill, doing environmental assessments in the oil sands, and many years of experience doing environmental assessments across the country, working with companies, working with engineers and designers, I can absolutely guarantee that state-of-the-art environmental technology is built into every project before any shovel goes in the ground. Scrubbers are put on smokestacks, waste water treatment plants are designed for, and the technology for environmental improvement is increasing all the time.

One can look at the miracle of Inco. Thirty or 40 years ago there was a moonscape around that town because of acid rain emissions from the mill. The mill has been cleaned up and the landscape around Sudbury has come back. I have been there and seen it. This is what advanced industrial capitalist free market societies do. We get richer and we do a better job environmentally, and the process is ongoing and continuing.

The other thing about environmental policy is that it is very important to measure environmental results.

There was a great philosopher, Pythagoras, who said that all was math. What I see in environmental policy-making is that nobody measures anything. We have this faith, and I use the term advisedly, that what we want to do is good for the world because, “I am a good person and I want to save the world, therefore what I do is good”. We do not do the hard-nosed measurements to zero in on what the environmental problems may be, measuring the state of the earth, measuring fish populations, water quality, and so on, and then focusing our efforts on where environmental programs will actually make a difference. For example, wetland loss is very serious in the country, yet we only have halfhearted measures to preserve wetlands.

Again, I go back to the process and I go back to what we, as the previous government, did to streamline the process and remove duplication. Hearings and meetings by themselves rarely result in environmental improvement. Spending $25 million putting a waste water treatment plant at a paper mill will improve the environment. That is how I look at environmental policy, and that is how it should be looked at across the country.

When we were going through the process of the Fisheries Act, as I mentioned earlier, there were critics of what we did under the Fisheries Act. Their metric as to what the 2012 changes to the Fisheries Act did was how many authorizations, how many charges resulted from the 2012 act, whereas our main concern, obviously, was the health of the fish.

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

Mr. Speaker, my friend from Yukon arrived in Ottawa on the same flight with me, but I did not have to start in Yukon, getting in at 2:45 in the morning. Yes, we touched down.

I just want to say that I do not know why he feels that this is less important for all Canadians. I appreciate that it is only within the riding he represents, the riding of Yukon, but this was an egregious thing that happened, Bill S-6, for the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, for the Teslin Tlingit First Nation, and for the Little Salmon Carmacks First Nation. They entered into good-faith negotiations with Canada. It is the honour of the crown that is at stake when one party to the negotiations unilaterally pushes through changes to something that was arrived at through good-faith negotiations with those particular first nations.

I welcome the fact that now, in the 42nd Parliament, with Bill C-17, we are redressing what was quite egregious under Bill S-6. At the time, I fought those changes as well, and they clearly went to court.

This should be a classic case of a lesson learned for a majority government in power, not to force through that which it wants when it knows the courts will overturn it. It wastes public resources. Frankly, Stephen Harper's administration did this all too often. I make no comment on most of my Conservative friends in the room at the moment, because they were not in the 41st Parliament. This is a classic case of wasting the public's time and insulting first nations, and now we are putting it right.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, it is great to rise today to talk about Bill C-17. I apologize if I am a little groggy. I have not been to sleep since Saturday night. It has taken me since 4:30 p.m. yesterday to get here, with my three plane flights. However, we will go ahead.

It is seldom that we have a bill before Parliament with respect to only one riding. Therefore, I appreciate having Bill C-17 on the agenda. I appreciate that many members in the House, maybe all of them except the minister and parliamentary secretary, may know very little about this bill because it relates to just one riding. That is totally understandable. Therefore, I will try to explain it to make it clear to members what they will be voting on.

The bill removes four issues that were put into place through Bill S-6 in a totally inappropriate process. The four issues are timelines, reassessment of ongoing projects, ministerial policy direction, and a delegation to the Yukon government of that authority. Although first nations negotiated all of the other changes, they were not offered the opportunity to negotiate these four matters. Therefore, for the other 336 members who do not live in Yukon, I will try to put this bill into context.

On February 14, 1973, the chiefs of Yukon went to Ottawa and presented Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau with a paper entitled “Together Today for our Children Tomorrow”, which started the land claim and self-government process in Yukon. Negotiations went on for 20 years, until the modern treaty, the Umbrella Final Agreement, was signed on May 29, 1993 by the three orders of government: federal, territorial, and first nations. The UFA is constitutionally protected, so not even we, as legislators, can change it. It is truly a collaborative, negotiated effort, which is now sometimes used across Canada and around the world. However, we must remember that it took 20 years.

Part of that treaty prescribed the development of YESAA, the Yukon Environmental Socio-economic Assessment Act, again a unique Yukon creation and model, our own assessment act. Unlike most of the rest of the country, we do not fall under CEAA. However, it deals with assessments on the lands of all the governments: the first nations governments, the Yukon government, and the federal government. Creating YESAA was a negotiation exercise by the three partner governments. It took 10 years. YESAA was passed in 2003, and so far so good.

YESAA had a built-in five-year review. That review took five years, from 2008 to 2012. A five-year review is not supposed to take five years. It not only happened after five years, but it also took five years. However, there was a lot of hard work that took place in those five years. There were 72 recommendations agreed to by the three levels of government after all of that work. These were implemented either in Bill S-6, or administratively. Once again, so far so good.

However, at the eleventh hour, near the end of the five years of negotiation, the federal government said it was adding four new major clauses to Bill S-6, and it was not negotiating them. After 20 years of the three partners working together on the UFA, and 10 years working together on the YESAA legislation, would members not be outraged if one of their partners said they were adding four new major clauses and that they could not negotiate them? It is probably not in the letter of the law, and certainly not in the spirit of the law. If we have an illegal law, or a law created in contravention of the treaty, then it does not matter what is in it, it has to go.

We are now in a whole new era of partnerships and collaboration with indigenous people and first nations governments. Often, industry has led the way in making partnerships with first nations people. Therefore, I want to go on to talk about some of the elements that people have raised in the debate so far.

One of the elements was that it is very important for mining. The Conservatives made a good point about how important mining is to the economy of Yukon. It has been the biggest producer of our GDP since the gold rush. That is a very important point. That is exactly what this bill is supposed to do, help that along and add the certainty needed to go ahead.

I am going to quote a couple of speeches and letters. Paul West-Sells, the president of Casino Mining Corporation, one of the biggest in the world and a world-class mine, said:

On behalf of Casino Mining Corporation (Casino), I am putting forward our company's concerns regarding the fragility of intergovernmental relations in the Yukon surrounding Bill S-6 and the negative impact this is having on the territory's mineral industry.

He went on to say:

Casino believes that if YESAA has the full support of all levels of government, it will provide greater certainty for the mineral industry.

This is exactly what the Conservatives were saying, so it is great that they are supporting this.

To this end, we encourage Canada, Yukon, and Yukon First Nation governments to engage, work collaboratively and find a solution to address the outstanding issues within Bill S-6.

That is exactly what Bill C-17 does.

Another speech was made at committee by Ms. Allison Rippin Armstrong, vice-president, lands and environment of Kaminak Gold Corporation, which has a good chance of being the next mine to open in Yukon. She said:

Kaminak is concerned that the process through which YESAA is being amended is creating increased distrust between governments and uncertainty in the assessment of regulatory process for current and future projects in Yukon.

As the Conservatives have so rightly said, it is exactly that uncertainty that this mining vice-president is talking about that we want to fix. She went on to say:

Our Coffee gold project is yet to enter the YESAA process. If Bill S-6 is passed and challenged in court, the Coffee gold project and our presence in the Yukon is uncertain. Kaminak urges the federal government to resume discussions with the first nations to work collectively toward reaching consensus on the proposed amendments to YESAA and avoid a court challenge.

Again, that is exactly what the bill does. It is what everyone is asking for.

I want to go on quote from a letter, once again in light of the Conservatives' emphasis on mining letter. All these documents I am quoting from are much longer and emphasize the situation, but we would not have time to go through them all.

This letter is signed by Sandy Silver, the Premier of Yukon. As the Conservatives and the NDP have said, it is important that decisions are made by Yukoners. This is signed by the Premier of Yukon; Peter Johnston, grand chief; and Mike Burke, president of Yukon Chamber of Mines. Once again, it is important for mining to get that certainty back. It says:

Repeal of these amendments and addressing industry concerns through collaborative framework is critical to re-establishing confidence in the development assessment process in Yukon and to honouring the intent of Final and Self-Government Agreements.

We were pleased to see Bill C-17, which removes these contentious clauses, introduced in the House of Commons on June 8, 2016.

[...] The Government of Yukon, self-governing Yukon First Nations, Council of Yukon First Nations and Yukon Chamber of Mines look forward to seeing Bill C-17 passed, without change, as soon as possible.

Before I go on to some of the other points that have been made in this debate, I want to mention that the honour of the crown is incumbent not only on the federal government, but also on the territorial governments.

As recently as March 22, and this is mostly to make sure that the lawyers in the various government departments and the House of Commons are aware of this, during the Supreme Court appeal hearing, Justice Rosalie Silberman Abella discussed the responsibilities of Yukon government in relation to first nation states, particularly the Yukon government, to whom the honour of the crown attaches.

It was 18 years earlier, in 1999, Justice Vertes' ruling in 1999, Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories, in the case of Donald Morin v. Anne Crawford, reflected on the constitutional status of the territories which had direct relevance to their function as the crown.

I do not expect anyone in the House to understand this complex legislation, because it only applies to Yukon, and it was a treaty between three governments there. That is why I am trying to explain some of the facets of this.

First of all, there was the comment that the people of Yukon should decide. That is exactly what this bill would do. What happened is that Bill S-6 came forward with the four clauses being thrown in at the end. As I said, it was great in the sense that 72 things got approved, either administratively or in Bill S-6, 72 things that the three governments negotiated and agreed on. However, the four things thrown in at the end really aggravated the people of Yukon. They did not like them being imposed, without being able to negotiate. Two large town hall meetings, with around 100 people each, spontaneously occurred. People were enraged about this imposition by the federal government, and rightly so.

Let us remember the 20 years of negotiation for the constitutionally protected treaty, the 10 years of negotiation for the YESAA legislation, and the five years of the five-year review. Obviously people were outraged when, all of a sudden, four items were added to their environmental legislation, by Ottawa, without allowing them to negotiate, as they had with everything else.

Another item that was raised, and it was a very good point, by the Conservatives is about northern strategy. As I responded to that, it is being developed right at the moment and, once again, by Yukoners from the bottom up. The chiefs, the premiers, and the people who live in Yukon will put their input into this northern Arctic policy framework. We really look forward to seeing this, in these days and times.

I can say that my view of the strategy for the north is that it first has to start with the people of the north. There will be great sovereignty and great success in the north if we focus on the people.

Another item I want to talk about that was raised is the reassessments. When a project needs to change, expand, or do something else, in the old days there was a reassessment that had to occur at the exact time that the next permit came due. Permits are what trigger assessments in this particular act, permits by various orders of government. Some people were concerned about that. It was mentioned in debate.

As I outlined, this system has been changed, through the recent amendments that have been made, and as I said, of the 72 some were policy and some were legislative. Now the assessments that YESAA can do are not limited to the next trigger, let us say the five years when the next water licence or mining permit is due. The assessment is not limited to that timeframe. The assessment can be for as long as the assessment board and the proponent think is reasonable, a time that fits with the project. Therefore, reassessments would not be due in those particular timeframes, as was talked about earlier.

The other aspect is this. Let us say that a project has gone on for 10 or 20 years, and the permits are expired; water permits, assessments, everything has expired. That does not mean things are going to be exactly the same. There is a number of things that have changed: the climate, patterns of wildlife, the amount of wildlife affected by the road, and the air and water affected by the tailings. Even though nothing is new in the particular production, there could easily be things that have to be changed.

The present system where that can be decided between the board and the deciding bodies makes a lot of sense, and that those assessments are only done when required.

We talked about barriers to mining, barriers to investments, disincentives to investment, and as I said earlier, that is a very important point raised by the Conservatives because that is exactly what this bill would do. It would remove those barriers, the ones that have been holding assessments in limbo. I will explain a little later about how that happens through this bill, and how this would clear it up. The minister talked about some of that in her speech.

I want to talk about the barriers that would leave it in limbo. Unique in the country is this partnership of the three governments that signed the treaty. The three governments all have particular roles to play in the assessment. If we were to change it and totally aggravate one of the parties, these changes are likely illegal but are certainly not in the spirit of the treaty. There would be huge uncertainty in the assessment process.

We first have to realize who will be on the board. The board is made up of the three parties. If one of the parties to the board makes these decisions, obviously there will be a problem. As the NDP also said, there are section 35 constitutional rights, which is, once again, why we have to have the first nations onside. They each have settlement land, over which they have total control and make decisions in light of what YESAA recommends. The way the UFA works, the entire Yukon is divided into all 14 first nations' traditional land. They have certain influence and say about their traditional land as part of the treaty, which included the huge quantities of land they gave up.

With these three huge types of influence in the process, if we make them furious by circumventing them and not acting in the honour of the crown or in good faith in the negotiations, obviously there is going to be huge uncertainty in getting environmental assessments done. That is why we have the letters from mining and from the Chamber of Mines, because they want to negotiate things correctly in the future and have a partnership. As I said earlier, there are some great partnerships between first nations and mines in the Yukon, and they are leading the way.

The last item I want to talk about is the timelines. Once again, it would be hard for people who do not come from the riding to understand how this works. It looks as if we are getting rid of all timelines, and that is not true. The timelines are set out in the regulations as a matter of policy and, as we know, there is a process regulations have to go through. If it were the riding of other members, would they not want something sent by the economic experts, environmental experts, first nation experts, and Yukon government experts, as opposed to it being imposed by Ottawa? That is exactly how it works. It is the same as the executive board decisions being made by the rules of the YESAB. Therefore, the timelines are there.

Finally, as was said a couple of times, even without timelines, the YESAB has a great record and was making decisions in less than the timelines, almost all of the time, anyway. In a way, it was a solution to something that was not a problem.

Let us have a new beginning. Let us have negotiations, which may be tough, but will include the three legal signatories to the treaty, with the federal government, the first nations government, the Yukon government, and industry now all onside working collaboratively. Hopefully all of us, as parliamentarians, will join this partnership, put this quickly behind us, and get on with building a fair and prosperous country for us all.

The House resumed consideration of the motion that Bill C-17, An Act to amend the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act and to make a consequential amendment to another Act be read the second time and referred to a committee, and of the amendment.

[Luc Berthold, Conservative, Mégantic—L'Érable, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am excited to rise today to talk about Bill C-17, an act to amend the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act and to make a consequential amendment to another Act—

[Murray Rankin, NDP, Victoria, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to congratulate my colleague, the Indigenous and Northern Affairs critic for the NDP, for his excellent speech, and for connecting the dots between Bill C-17 in Yukon and what is being achieved, and what 40 years of experience with the Cree–Naskapi and the northern Quebec agreement has achieved in terms of certainty there. I was intrigued by the connection that was made and the lessons that have been learned, which the hon. member emphasized.

What I would like to ask the member specifically is in relation to his Bill C-262, which, of course, would address the need to enshrine a review under section 35 of the Constitution for indigenous rights, just as we routinely do for our Charter rights. I would like to ask about the notion of free, prior, and informed consent. Would this bill, which includes the three governments, federal, provincial, and Yukon first nations, on the board of the YESAA statute, achieve the free, prior, and informed consent that is required, since they co-drafted the bill and are on the actual board, for example, in respect of a specific project? In other words, does that pass muster? Would the kind of bill that we have before us today be consistent with the principles of the hon. member's bill on free, prior, and informed consent that will soon be before Parliament?

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to speak.

I do not want to impinge on the hon. member's unbridled enthusiasm for Bill C-17, so I will let him comment as he wants. However, I did want to comment on the comments of the last two Conservative speakers. I know they are not allowed to repeat themselves, but they both talked about uncertainty and how much jobs and investment depend on this uncertainty.

In doing that, the members are supporting this bill. If their next speaker says that, the Conservatives are in fact supporting this bill, because this bill is about the uncertainty that has shut down a lot of investment in mining because of the items in Bill S-6 that upset one of the parties to the treaty. Who do people think is on the board that makes these environmental assessments? It is the three governments. If one of them has not been treated fairly, obviously there is going to be a lot of uncertainty. That is why certain mining companies have written and been in favour of this.

I want to reiterate the point on timelines, as I guess I was not clear enough for the Conservatives. Since Bill S-6 went through, other sections of it have allowed that there are now timelines. The timelines are in the policy, the rules of the YESAB. These rules are established. They had to be gazetted. There are already timelines, so they should not keep saying that we are taking away timelines.

Finally, on reassessments, that is another change that came about through another part of Bill S-6 that was approved. As I said, most of it is approved, and it is just these things thrown in at the 11th hour. Before, the assessment was only up to the time of the trigger, say the five years that the member mentioned. Now, with the new rules, the assessment can be longer; it could be for what they think the life of the project is. Therefore, there are times when this reassessment will not occur. That does not lead to the uncertainty that was being suggested, and I will therefore let the member continue on with his good points.

[Romeo Saganash, NDP, Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to begin by repeating the opening of the minister's speech but by adding another dimension to it. Yes, it is fine to acknowledge that we are on unceded Algonquin territory, but it is quite another thing to recognize as well that Ottawa has not been paying the rent on this place. It is unceded Algonquin territory but we also must recognize the second part of that.

I want to acknowledge the importance of this legislation. There is a lot of talk today about nation-to-nation reconciliation and so on and so forth. This is one example of how to get it right. This is one example of how to proceed.

The previous bill with respect to environmental assessment in Yukon, Bill S-6 was unilaterally imposed on indigenous peoples in Yukon and the Yukon government. That is not the way to go about it. We do not change agreements that we sign with indigenous peoples unilaterally. It is supposed to be done collaboratively and that did not happen with the previous bill. The present bill would have the effect of repealing some of the controversial aspects of the previous bill. Let me repeat some of them.

The previous bill would have authorized the Minister of Indigenous and Northern Affairs to delegate any of the minister's powers or functions and duties under the Indian Act to the territorial government. One of the first things we learn in law school is that cannot happen. We cannot delegate powers to another. It is one of the first Latin phrases that I learned when I went to law school, delegatus non potest delegare. We are not supposed to do that.

The other controversial aspect, and I pointed to this aspect a while ago in my question to the minister, is that the previous bill established time limits on environmental assessment. That is problematic, because my constitutional rights have no time limits. Time limits cannot be imposed on the constitutional rights of indigenous peoples. That was one of the other controversial parts of the previous bill.

I want to talk a bit about the notion of clarity, the notion of having clear rules under environmental assessment. I am from the James Bay northern Quebec region. The entire area is covered by the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement . A special constitutional and legal regime is in place and the rules are clear in the agreement as to how development is going to happen in James Bay territory.

Section 22, which is a highly complex chapter of the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, provides for that environmental and social protection regime where Cree are a part of the environmental assessment and review board. The Cree nation and the Inuit can appoint members to the board. That is true participation in the environmental assessment process. Section 22 of the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement is the environmental and social protection regime that is provided for under that treaty.

A lot of people have said, especially at the beginning of the regime, that this process is too heavy, too complex, and will impede development in the territory. Quite the contrary happened after 40 years of experience with this regime, after 40 years of experience with these processes. The James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement has not impeded any development in the territory.

In fact, it has even allowed many partnerships to happen between the Cree and Inuit in the territory and mining companies, forestry companies, and hydroelectric development companies, because the rules were clear. They might be heavy or complex, but when the rules are clear, everybody knows what the rules are, and that is what helps development take place in a given territory.

The other aspect I want to talk about briefly is the fact that this bill was co-developed, as well as co-drafted, I would presume, and that does not happen often enough in this place. I also have experience with the very first federal legislation that was co-drafted with the indigenous people concerned. That is the Cree-Naskapi (of Quebec) Act in 1984. That act was negotiated with the Cree and the Naskapi, and co-drafted, with every clause or provision accepted even before the legislation was tabled in this place. That is what nation-to-nation agreements looks like. That is how we should proceed with any given legislation that relates to indigenous peoples, indigenous rights, and indigenous status.

One of the most important aspects of all of this discussion is the notion of free, prior, and informed consent of indigenous peoples in any given project. In fact, the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples contains several provisions articulating the concept of free, prior, and informed consent. The most general is article 19, which obliges states to consult and co-operate in good faith with indigenous peoples in order to obtain free, prior, and informed consent before adopting and implementing measures or legislation that may affect them.

Other provisions of the declaration set out more specific obligations requiring degrees of free, prior, and informed consent in specific contexts. Article 32, for instance, obliges states to consult and co-operate in good faith with indigenous peoples in order to obtain their free and informed consent prior to the approval of any project affecting their lands, territories, and other resources. That is an important concept that we need to keep in mind every time we discuss legislation in this place, especially with respect to the environment.

Article 28 of the UN declaration establishes a right to redress for indigenous peoples for lands, territories, and resources that they have traditionally owned, occupied, or used, which have been confiscated, taken, occupied, used, or damaged without their free, prior, and informed consent. It is an important provision in the UN declaration.

Article 29 requires states to take effective measures to avoid storage or disposal of hazardous materials in the lands or territories of indigenous peoples without their free, prior, and informed consent. It is an important concept.

Article 10 protects indigenous peoples from being forcibly removed from their lands and territories. No relocation shall take place without the free, prior, and informed consent of the indigenous peoples concerned and after agreement on just and fair compensation and, where possible, the option of return.

The declaration provides context to these articles, clarifying that indigenous peoples have suffered from historic injustices as a result of their colonization and dispossession of their lands, territories, and resources. The intention of the rights in the declaration will enhance harmonious and co-operative relationships between states and indigenous peoples. That was exactly my point a while ago.

Article 1 states that indigenous peoples have the right to the full enjoyment, as a collective or as individuals, of all human rights and fundamental freedoms. Articles 3 and 4, as partner provisions, state that indigenous peoples have a right to self-determination, including to fully determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social, and cultural development, and to determine self-government regarding internal or local affairs.

The United Nations special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples is an expert in the field of indigenous rights, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to examine obstacles to protecting rights of indigenous peoples, to review alleged violations of indigenous rights, and to make recommendations on appropriate measures to prevent and remedy violations. The special rapporteur has consistently emphasized the importance of good faith dialogue and meaningful consultation in the aim of achieving consent as the primary objective of the principles of free, prior, and informed consent. The purpose is to reverse historical patterns of imposed decisions and conditions of life that have threatened the survival of indigenous peoples, in the way that principles of consultation and consent have the objective of avoiding the imposition of the will of one party.

Those are important principles that we need to apply every time we consider legislation in this place

The Minister of Justice already has the obligation to vet any legislation against the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. We do not have the equivalent, as we speak right now, for aboriginal treaty rights under section 35.

I have a bill, by the way, that will be debated this coming September, Bill C-262, that would fix that. I am hoping that I will get the full support of the members of this House.

Under international law, indigenous peoples have the right to exercise self-determination. Indigenous peoples have pre-existing sovereignty, jurisdiction, and rights, and the right to self-determination in regard to their territories. That must be respected, without discrimination or threats of use of force, imposed time limitations, or delegation of authority.

In October 2015, when the Champagne and Aishihik First Nations, the Little Salmon/ Carmacks First Nation, and the Teslin Tlingit Council took Bill S-6 legislative changes to the Supreme Court of Yukon, their case stated that the changes were inconsistent with the final land claim agreements. Since then, concerned indigenous peoples have been compelled to negotiate under these false premises. As a result, indigenous parties to the negotiations have little or no leverage.

In this context, the special rapporteur has stated that most consultation processes require key elements in order to be considered free, informed, and in good faith.

First, in designing a consultation process, attention must be paid to the implications of power imbalances that may exist between indigenous groups and the governments engaging in consultation, and, if necessary, deliberate steps should be taken to address those.

Second, the indigenous groups affected must have full access to information regarding the project, including technical studies, financial plans, environmental assessments, and other relevant documents that the context demands. Indigenous groups may also be involved in the conduct of those studies, in a language that they may understand. For many years, in the James Bay territory, Hydro Quebec provided information only in French to the Cree people, who have English as a second language or Cree as their mother tongue. That was a fundamental problem.

Third, consultations should take place before the government authorizes or a company undertakes or commits to undertake any activity related to the project within indigenous territory or other lands subject to indigenous rights. In practice, consultation may take place at multiple stages of a project, from its initial proposal, through exploration, development, and operation, to its closure. Indigenous groups should be consulted from the earliest stages to build trust and co-operation. Starting the consultation process at later stages often engenders mistrust, making agreement or consent more difficult to achieve.

Fourth, indigenous people should be consulted, through their own representative institutions, leadership, and decision-making structures. This gives recognition to the indigenous peoples' own choices and forms of self-government, thereby affording the consultation process greater legitimacy.

Bill C-17 has significant meaning for Yukon first nations and regional politics in the far north, but sometimes it does not go far enough. That is the party's decision, to go with it.

In November 2015, the Land Claims Agreements Coalition, which includes first nations in the Yukon, wrote to the Minister of Indigenous Affairs requesting the immediate suspension of the previous government's fiscal approach, as it was incompatible with their treaties. They requested that the new government develop a proper fiscal approach based on a nation-to-nation relationship.

I am pleased to see the minister responding with the bill, as a first step to rectifying the imposed changes from the Harper government. However, in addition to the provisions in this bill, the Liberal government must reverse the Harper government's unilateral imposition of a new fiscal agreement on all of the first nations in Yukon. Any laws that are attempting to change the implementation of land claims agreements can only be made with the full and active consultation and participation of first nations governments.

I want to close by saying that one of the important roles we have, as legislators, is to keep in mind our responsibility as parliamentarians. One of the highest responsibilities that we have as parliamentarians is to uphold the rule of law, and upholding the rule of law means respecting the Constitution. Respecting the Constitution includes section 35 rights, aboriginal and treaty rights. That is what upholding the rule of law means.

For too many years, in fact, for 150 years, the federal governments, successive Liberal and Conservative governments, have been adversaries to indigenous peoples and their rights and their status. It is the only group in this country that has received that kind of discriminatory approach. For 150 years, Canada has fought against aboriginal rights and aboriginal peoples in this country. We do not know exactly how many hundreds of millions of dollars that the federal governments spends fighting aboriginal rights every year. Some say it is about $300 million, and some say is it up to $1 billion a year, that is spent fighting aboriginals, the first peoples of this country.

Many times, those fights are unnecessary. Even after a first victory, a second victory, a third victory, we are still dragged to the Supreme Court every time, every single time in the last 150 years.

As we start to celebrate the 150 years of this country, maybe we should keep that in mind, and that over the next 150 years, we do not need to do that. If we are truly in an era of reconciliation, if we truly believe what we say when we talk about reconciliation, nation to nation, respect for aboriginal rights, then those kinds of things need to stop. A case in point is the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal, where the federal government is still against aboriginal children in this country.

I think it is important to remind ourselves that our foremost duty as parliamentarians, as members of Parliament, is to uphold the rule of law. That means respecting the Constitution and respecting the fundamental human rights of the first peoples in this country.

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Mr. Speaker, there is a really big challenge out there when it comes to investment in our resource industry. As we add more regulations, more red tape, there is a challenge.

When industry wants to invest, it is looking at a lot of things. It looks at the tax load, whether it is federal or territorial. That is a huge factor. Adding on a carbon tax, and we have the uncertainty of the reassessment and taking out time limits, is pushing it to the edge where investment is not worth it.

How long will the environmental review take? Will it be one year or five years? We do not know. That is why timelines are important. It instills confidence within the industry, confidence that it will take a certain time to do and that a certain amount of dollars will be invested for an assessment.

After that, if there is approval and the operation is started, there is the challenge of what the reassessment will look like. For example, a $100 million investment has been made in this operation and now a reassessment comes up. What if it does not meet the targets put out before them. That will be a lost investment, because the reassessment said that it was because of climate change or whatever the reason may be. Now there is that huge factor that maybe it will not be operational in five years because of the reassessment. It is really sad.

If there are no changes to the operation, I do not believe it is helpful to do a reassessment again on an operation that is exactly the same. Now, with Bill C-17, the possibility of reassessment after reassessment will have a negative impact for people who want to invest in the resource industry in the north.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Yukon, YT]

Mr. Speaker, a number of the things the member said are incorrect and do not support his amendment.

A number of times the member, importantly, said that the people of Yukon should decide. This bill is exactly about that. When the previous government imposed four major conditions without consulting the people of Yukon and without allowing them to negotiate, the economic development people in Yukon and the first nations held two huge gatherings of the public in contravention so they could make their own decisions.

I am glad the member talked about northern strategy because the government is in the process of developing one from the bottom up, an Arctic policy framework, working with leaders in the north.

The member mentioned a few things that were agreed to in the bill, and there were 72 things. Some the things he mentioned as being problems are not problems because they already are agreed to and we are not touching them.

The member made a comment about reassessments. There have been changes to the regulations that now allow that in certain conditions and under appropriate conditions reassessments will not have to be done.

He talked about mining being at the heart of northern economic development and that there were barriers. That is another very important point. This bill would remove the uncertainty. It would take away the barriers.

He talked about Investment being down. That is exactly why we want to change it so investment goes up. Although, he also made a good point that it was partly because of world metal prices.

Finally, the member talked about mining. I do not have time to talk about them all, I have two letters from mining companies and a letter from the Yukon Chamber of Mines, which says:

The Government of Yukon, self-governing Yukon First Nations, Council of Yukon First Nations, and the Yukon Chamber of Mines look forward to see Bill C-17 passed, without change, as soon as possible.

Therefore, regarding the member's references to mining and wanting it to go ahead, Bill C-17 being passed is exactly what the mining industry wants.

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the territories have already become leaders in climate change adaption because of the front-line impact they have already had to experience. It is irresponsible to now ask them to do more when our northern communities are facing many economic and environmental challenges.

According to the Mining Association of Canada, a typical Canadian mine spends about 30% of its annual budget on energy, and thus the impact of the federal carbon price will hit northern mines the hardest. The sole source of power for these northern mines is fossil fuels, and let us not forget as well the thousands of tonnes of resources that must be flown in just to start operations on these mines.

The election of Donald Trump south of the border means that mining operations in places like Alaska and Montana will not be paying an uncompetitive carbon tax but will instead be thriving on a lower tax agenda. How can we expect to help the economy if we bring in an uncompetitive carbon tax that simply encourages mining companies to take investments and jobs outside of Canada?

I should note that we have some of the strictest environmental regulations in the world. Let us talk about the oil and gas moratorium. Just a number of weeks ago, the Premier of the Northwest Territories, Bob McLeod, told the Arctic Oil & Gas Symposium that the five-year ban on Arctic drilling in the Beaufort Sea has created a no-win situation for his territory's plan to develop a strong resource economy. The same has happened all across the Canadian north.

For years, our northern territories have negotiated in good faith to have the power to make their own decisions when it comes to their natural resources, and the Prime Minister has failed on his promise to be a partner of our northern communities. Instead, he has forced an agreement upon them that will leave hundreds of billions of dollars of oil and gas in the ground, and thousands of potential good-paying jobs off the table.

The mining industry is at the heart of the economic opportunity for many residents in the north. The majority of project requests will be tied up, slowed down, and ultimately ruined by this legislation, which will impact investments in this industry. The suggestion that such a policy will benefit the Yukon reveals just how out of touch the Liberals are with our northern communities.

Bill C-17 is taking away northern independence. The Liberal promise to simply repeal the controversial sections in Bill S-6is another example of how they made promises without any consideration for the consequences. There could have been an opportunity to find a solution that addressed everyone's concerns while supporting economic development in Yukon, but instead Liberals are using the blunt instrument of repeal.

The people of the Yukon have the right to determine their own policies on natural resource development, rather than having a federal government restrict their opportunities for economic development. The Liberal government is shutting out the potential for many jobs in the natural resource sector that could be created from diverse private investment in the Yukon and all of Canada's northern regions.

Bill C-17 introduces uncertainty into the resource development review process, which will undermine economic opportunities for all Yukoners as well as create uncertainties for the rest of Canada about whether this will form the basis of the Liberal approach in the future.

Bill C-17 is detrimental to the independence of our northern communities, as it takes the devolution of regulatory power away from the territorial government, as was introduced by Bill S-6, and returns it to the hands of the federal minister. The Liberal minister from Toronto cannot know the reality on the ground in the same way as the people who live it every day. The power of Yukoners to decide what is best for their economy is being taken away and dictated by Ottawa.

Canada is a country rich in natural resources, and these resources contribute greatly to the country's economy and the economy of the Yukon, increasing opportunities for all Canadians. Such avenues for development should especially be pursued in the current economy climate, but the Liberals would rather create additional levels of bureaucracy and an uncertain future, to the detriment of all Canadians.

Now we have uncertainty in the review process. By introducing a limitless environmental review process and mandating continued project reassessment, the Liberals are sending a clear message that they will not support resource development in Canada's north.

The removal of time limits and the option for exempting renewal, on the other hand, fits well with the ongoing narrative that the Liberals are introducing unnecessary delays and uncertainty into our regulatory process.

Additionally, we can make the point that this change puts Yukon at a competitive disadvantage with the rest of Canada for attracting private investment. Private companies will take their investments elsewhere and the people of Yukon will not be able to experience the benefits of an expanding economy, while the Liberals continue their spending spree and ignore the ballooning deficit. This problem will only be increased as the Liberals create increasing uncertainty throughout the country with regard to a review process, sending a clear message to industry that Canada is not interested in pursuing natural resource development.

This will have an impact on the economy. The economy in the north is suffering enough as it is. We do not need the Liberals chasing away investments. Jobs are getting harder to come by in the north. Instead of encouraging investment in resource development and creating more jobs, the Liberals are developing a larger bureaucracy and eliminating opportunity. The government is so caught up in its own concerns for expanding the environmental bureaucracy that it has forgotten the people of Yukon who are struggling just to make ends meet because of a bad economy. The Liberals are stacking the deck against hard-working Canadians who are trying to provide for their families.

According to Statistics Canada annual estimate of mineral production, the Yukon territory has seen a decline of the dollar amount from mining activities for all but one of the past six years. Since 2012, the amount of money brought into the territories from mining production has decreased by a staggering 25%. By increasing the barriers of entry, by putting not a firm end date on environmental assessments, and through increasing operation costs with their carbon tax grab scheme, it is clear that the Liberals do not care about the economic future of Yukon.

If the decline in the actual value of minerals does not raise alarms about the negative impacts of these policies, a more staggering fact is the extreme decline in new investments. Since the Liberals took power just two years ago, Stats Canada reported that the actual investment in mining in Yukon had decreased by over 42%, or an equivalent of $80 million.

Bill C-17 is also an example of the Liberals thinking they know best for the territories. The people of Yukon should be the ones to decide whether extra environmental regulations are necessary as it is their economy that is being affected.

In Yukon one of the biggest problems is the fact that so many residents rely on the government to provide employment instead of a strong private sector. The fact that the Liberals are putting up so many barriers for private sector job creation with a bill like Bill C-17 seems like a personal attack on those trying to find jobs in Yukon. The bill, along with the carbon tax scheme the Liberals are forcing on to the provinces and territories, looks as if the government has a vendetta against any economic growth in the north.

I went to Yukon to meet with stakeholders about the bill. They were not impressed. One of the reasons they were not impressed is because the Yukon mining industry was struggling to survive. Although mining has always represented a huge share of the Yukon's economy, in recent years there has been a steep decline in the amount of open mines. This has taken millions out of the economy and thousands of jobs.

As of today, there is only one mine open and producing in Yukon, the Minto copper mine. I visited this mine with my colleague, the MP for Lakeland, to get a tour of the operation and was told that the operation was heavily dependent on the price of copper. With such low prices, the future is always uncertain. Adding more red tape to a struggling operation will not help anyone.

The Conservative Party's position has been to streamline and harmonize regulatory regimes across Canada in order to promote investor confidence, provide consistency and transparency, and increase efficiency in regulatory regimes. The economy of Yukon and all the north needs more development and investment and it needs to be put back in the hands of the people who understand it best. To think otherwise would be ignorant. Canada cannot continue on this uncertain path of unnecessary bureaucratic red tape that only serves to turn away private investment and cut jobs.

The north, being so rich in its natural and human resources, has the potential to be a powerhouse of industry in the country, but the Liberals want to keep resources in the ground and deny economic opportunity to millions of Canadians.

Bill C-17 is a knife in the heart of the northern economy and just one example of how the Liberals are taking away any provincial self-determination, creating uncertainty in regulations, and continually desecrating Canada's economic well-being.

I move:

That the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “That” and substituting the following: “Bill C-17, An Act to amend the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act and to make a consequential amendment to another Act, be not now read a second time but that the order be discharged, the bill withdrawn and the subject matter thereof referred to the Standing Committee on Indigenous and Northern Affairs.”

[David Yurdiga, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the previous Conservative government made the north a priority by launching a comprehensive northern strategy focused on sovereignty, the environment, the economy, and governance. Our introduction of Bill S-6 was just one of the major pieces of legislation we put forward in order to empower the territories in all four areas.

Despite devolution of resource management to Yukon in 2003, the federal government remained responsible for environmental regulations in the region under the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act. Under the act, 11 of the 14 Yukon first nations have negotiated individual land claims and self-governing arrangements.

After the legislated five-year review, it was clear that we could improve the legislation for the benefit of Yukon. The legislation introduced legislated time limits for assessment that were consistent with other federal environmental assessment legislation in order to not stall economic growth with unnecessary red tape and regulations. It also provided the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development with the authority to provide binding policy direction to the Yukon environmental and socio-economic assessment board, and it equipped the Government of Canada to communicate expectations on matters such as board conduct, the use of new technology, and fulfillment of roles and responsibilities related to aboriginal consultation.

To ensure both quorum and continuity, it allowed for a board member's term to be extended for the purpose of completing a screening or review. It enabled the Government of Canada to develop cost recovery regulations so that the costs incurred for public reviews would be borne by the proponents of development projects and not the taxpayer. It reduced the regulatory burdens by clarifying that a project need not undergo another assessment when a project authorization is to be renewed or amended, unless, in the opinion of the decision body or bodies, there is a significant change to the project.

When the previous premier of Yukon, Darrell Pasloski, spoke in front of the committee about the bill, he mentioned that this was about evening the playing field. Yukon had a different, less competitive regulatory regime, and that was costing Yukoners desperately needed jobs. The lack of development was also stopping Yukon from developing its untapped potential and offering jobs to those who need an opportunity.

The largest provider of jobs in Yukon right now is the territorial government. The second is the resource industry, which provides good-paying jobs to Yukoners from across the territory. Thousands of these employees are indigenous people. The Liberals talk a big game when it comes to supporting Canada's indigenous people, but how does the government expect to provide economic opportunity for these communities to grow when it continually puts up barriers instead of opening up opportunities as it promised it would do?

For example, mining in particular is the key to wealth for many first nation groups, whether it is gold, copper, or some other mineral. Mining does not happen unless a company can negotiate an agreement with first nations that have treaty rights to the land.

Bill C-17 is just another example of the difference between the previous Conservative government, which empowered northerners, and the current Liberal government, which is obsessed with taking power away from the territories and bringing in countless regulations to stifle economic opportunity and growth.

Bill C-17 is a step back in the progress that has been made for resource development in Yukon. It seeks to expand governmental regulations and stifle growth. These unnecessary regulations would impede private sector investment and pose further threats to jobs and economic development in the region.

The initial goal of the Yukon Environmental and Socio-economic Assessment Act was to establish a single development assessment process for projects on all federal, territorial, and first nations land in Yukon. We did that, and improved upon it. The Liberal government seems intent on undoing all the good work we did. Bill C-17 flies in the face of economic development and diversification by generating more government red tape and extra regulations that deter private investment.

In a time of global economic uncertainty, the Liberal government continues to increase deficits and give money to everyone who has their hand out, rather than eliminating barriers to investment to improve the economy. Bill C-17 puts the people of Yukon at a competitive disadvantage with the rest of Canada for private investment, as industry is dissuaded from resource exploration in the region by an uncertain review process and a seemingly endless amount of bureaucratic reassessment.

This unlimited environmental review process and perpetual reassessment calls into question the Liberals' plan for a larger pan-Canadian environmental process review. Do the Liberals want to remove timelines in the rest of Canada too? Did they even consider regulatory consistency across the country when writing this bill? At a time when the government should be focusing on stabilizing the economy, the Liberals continue to dole out money in their sunny ways delirium, and feverishly build barriers to private investment in Canada, particularly in our northern regions.

Let us look at some of those barriers.

One is the carbon tax. A carbon tax is a tax on everything. The Trudeau government does not seem to understand that the northern economy relies on—