Bill C-48 (Historical)

Oil Tanker Moratorium Act

An Act respecting the regulation of vessels that transport crude oil or persistent oil to or from ports or marine installations located along British Columbia's north coast

This enactment enacts the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, which prohibits oil tankers that are carrying more than 12 500 metric tons of crude oil or persistent oil as cargo from stopping, or unloading crude oil or persistent oil, at ports or marine installations located along British Columbia’s north coast from the northern tip of Vancouver Island to the Alaska border. The Act prohibits loading if it would result in the oil tanker carrying more than 12 500 metric tons of those oils as cargo.
The Act also prohibits vessels and persons from transporting crude oil or persistent oil between oil tankers and those ports or marine installations for the purpose of aiding the oil tanker to circumvent the prohibitions on oil tankers.
Finally, the Act establishes an administration and enforcement regime that includes requirements to provide information and to follow directions and that provides for penalties of up to a maximum of five million dollars.

Bill C-48--Time Allocation Motion

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Minister of Transport]

Mr. Speaker, of course I know that my hon. colleague realizes that this is an extremely important bill. It is a bill that we very clearly announced a long time ago. It was one of the electoral promises we made. We have had a chance to talk about this bill for a while. However, it will go to committee, as we know, and will be amply debated there, not to mention report stage and third reading. It will also get an airing in the Senate. This is an extremely important bill that we promised Canadians we were going to deliver. I cannot say how many people support it, but it is a huge number . We are going forward with this bill and hope the opposition will be constructive about it.

[Mark Strahl, Conservative, Chilliwack—Hope, BC]

Mr. Speaker, yes, it is an important bill. That is why we wanted to have more than two members from the official opposition speak to it before the government invoked closure. Perhaps we should not be surprised. The government House leader and the Liberal government telegraphed that they would go to time allocation whether or not we agreed with them.

The Minister of Transport just said this was an important bill and that we would be heard somewhere else, not in the House of Commons. This is once again a case of the Liberals wanting an audience, not an opposition. They are violating the rights of this place. There were two speakers on a half-day. We agreed to give them a half-day when the Governor General was sworn in. They took advantage of our good faith and are abusing the process to shut down the opposition after two votes.

Is the minister really proud of shutting down the debate after only two opposition speakers have had an opportunity to speak?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very proud of this bill. That I will say to everyone right now. I promise I will only mention it once, but I remember—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

I am very interested in hearing both the question and the answer. I know it is nice to get all excited about it, but I remind the hon. members that I would like to hear what is being asked and answered.

The hon. Minister of Transport.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am very proud of this bill. I want to assure my colleague that the debate will continue. There are many more stages in the House of Commons, as well as the Senate, where this bill will go. I will only say it once, but I remember keeping count of the more than a hundred time allocation motions the opposition moved when it was in government just a little while ago.

[Sheila Malcolmson, NDP, Nanaimo—Ladysmith, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I had a speaking spot on this bill this afternoon. It looks like it will not happen now. It is very disappointing. There has been a lot of community pressure for a ban along these lines brought forward by some of my own colleagues in previous parliaments. However, there are a lot of questions that we still have to ask about this bill. For example, the minister is given too much arbitrary power to exempt vessels from the ban and to determine what kind of fuels are included or excluded; we hear that there is not enough consultation with first nations; and the bill does nothing to prevent the kind of spills we saw on the north coast, for example, by the Nathan E. Stewart. That spill was calamitous for the shellfish industry and the maritime jobs of the Heiltsuk people.

If the government is so proud of this bill and so ready to go forward with it, why not give the official opposition and the progressive opposition the ability to ask questions and offer our ideas now in the House where everyone can see our work on this issue?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

Mr. Speaker, of course, we have said very specifically that the ministerial power would only be used in extreme emergencies for the public good and in cases where there was a dire emergency and a need to refuel a community along the northern coast of British Columbia.

As for the persistent oils that are on the list, we gave that a great deal of thought before we came up with that list. The ones that are on the persistent oil list are those that take a long period of time to break up and can potentially cause the greatest damage to ecosystems, bird life, mammals, and shorelines. Those are things that we gave a great deal of thought to. We excluded naphtha, jet gas, propane, LNG, and gasoline.

We gave it a huge amount of thought and have already talked about it. Therefore, I am not quite sure why my colleague is asking the same question again.

[Chris Warkentin, Conservative, Grande Prairie—Mackenzie, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the minister says he is proud of the bill. Is he proud to shut down the democratic process in the House? There are members from all parties who were elected by their constituents to bring their perspectives to the House. We have 96 members in our caucus. I am proud of each and every one of them. Many of them have different perspectives, coming from different communities, and will be impacted differently by the bill.

The minister is suggesting that we should be happy if five of our members have a chance to speak to the bill: two in the House of Commons and three at committee. This would be the full complement of Conservative representation that would be brought to this process with the bill before us.

We have members from Calgary, British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and across this country who have a right to be heard on the bill. Their constituents demand that they be heard on the bill. The minister is shutting down that right of these members to be heard, but more importantly, he is shutting down the voices of Canadians.

Is the minister proud of shutting down the voices of Canadians who are concerned about the bill?

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I have to say that I find this incredibly rich. I remember over 100 occasions when time allocation was used by the opposition when in government. To hear that kind of manufactured outrage right now is, frankly, a little bit too much.

[Don Davies, NDP, Vancouver Kingsway, BC]

Mr. Speaker, two thoughts come to mind.

First, I do have to second the comment just been made by the government side. The Conservatives, when they were in government, imposed time allocation and closure on debate over 100 times in this place. They had no respect for the rights of parliamentarians to have their say on bills.

However, on the other hand, as we learned in grade 4, two wrongs do not make a right, and it is no excuse for the Liberal government to now impose closure and take away the rights of people on this side of the House to have their say.

I also had a speaking spot today. I come from Vancouver, a coastal city where our constituents have very important concerns about tankers on the coast. Now I have been robbed of my ability to raise the voice of the people of Vancouver Kingsway in the House, because the Liberal government is imposing time allocation and taking away our right to represent our constituents in the House.

It was wrong when the Conservatives did so. It is wrong that the Liberals are doing it now. This is why we need a New Democrat government in 2019 to finally bring back respect for democracy in this chamber and across this country.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his impassioned comments on this, but I do want to reassure him that there are still many stages left before this bill leaves the House of Commons for the Senate. I am optimistic that he will have an opportunity to express himself during the course of the different stages of this legislation through the House of Commons.

[Rachael Thomas, Conservative, Lethbridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, what just happened in this House is that the Liberals made the decision to shut down debate. They moved time allocation on a bill that is very important with regard to the energy sector. It is a bill that I and many of my colleagues were hoping to have the opportunity to speak to.

It is important to note that my colleagues and I do not represent ourselves. We do not. I think the Liberals sometimes forget that. They forget that they are here on behalf of those who elected them to be here, to be a voice on behalf of the Canadian people. On this side of the House, we have not forgotten that. We were elected by our constituents to be a voice on their behalf in this place.

This place is called the House of Commons because it is supposed to be common people representing common people. The only way that can happen is if debate actually takes place in this House. What my colleagues across the aisle have just done by moving time allocation robs us and Canadians from coast to coast of a voice in this place where they deserve to have a voice. Why? It is because Canada upholds democracy, which means we were voted in, we were elected to be in this place to represent our constituents.

On behalf of the people of Lethbridge, I am meant to be in this place to have a voice for them. The Liberals just took away that voice from those in Lethbridge.

Here is my question for the hon. minister. Are you Liberals actually so anti-democratic that you would shut down debate and silence the voice of constituents from coast to coast? Are you that anti-democratic?

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

Before the minister answers, I just want to remind the hon. members to place their questions through the Chair and their answers through the Chair, so that we do not get into—and I know it never gets very rowdy in here—screaming at each other. Going through the Chair keeps the tone down and keeps it respectful.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Notre-Dame-de-Grâce—Westmount, QC]

Mr. Speaker, that is a good reminder.

Back in 2015 we definitely heard a lot of voices from Canadians who very strongly supported the concept of a permanent moratorium on west coast tanker traffic. That is, of course, the substance of this bill.

We feel that there is going to be a reasonable amount of time for members of the opposition to express themselves on this bill. The bill is going to go to committee. It will come back for report stage and third reading. There will be other opportunities for both parties to express themselves on whether they agree with it or not.

As well, there is the very important work that goes on in committee. May I say, on a very positive note, that yesterday there was great co-operation among all the parties in doing the clause by clause on another important transport bill, Bill C-49.

[Kennedy Stewart, NDP, Burnaby South, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I feel pretty lucky today, because the other day when the minister was making his speech, I was in the House and I happened to be able to ask him a question. It appears that I am going to be one of the few who are going to be able to ask a question of the government, because it is shutting down debate.

The problem with that is that I asked the minister a question, and he deliberately evaded it. I represent a west coast constituency that has the proposed Kinder Morgan pipeline set to run through it. We are talking about protection of the west coast.

What the minister would not answer was whether or not he agreed with his colleague that the army should be used to ram this pipeline through British Columbia. I am giving the minister a second chance now to answer that question. Is he going to use the defence forces to ram the Kinder Morgan pipeline through communities and through first nations reserves against the will of British Columbians?