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.

Natural Resources

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to take up the question I had during question period a little while ago. It was about the hard-working men and women at Evraz steel, the steel plant in Regina, Saskatchewan, and the fact that they have continually had to lay off more and more workers because there is just not as much work as there used to be back in the good old days, one might say. We have had years of policies put forward by the Liberal government, such as Bill C-48, the shipping ban; Bill C-69, the “no more pipelines” law; and the emissions cap, which has been shown to really affect the resource industry in our country. My colleague for Calgary Midnapore said it very well: We have seen a thousand people getting laid off in Calgary recently. We have seen mills being closed in B.C. because of the tariffs on softwood lumber.

I know there are five projects from the Major Projects Office that have been announced. The question I focused on was this: If these get built, first and foremost, they should be built with Canadian steel, Canadian product and Canadian labour. This is one of the questions I would like to follow up on.

The other one is this: Five projects were announced, but there are still 38 major projects at the impact assessment phase. Over the last few years, according to my numbers, 86,000 jobs and $54 billion have fled the country in investment in our energy sector. TransCanada, for example, is building pipelines, just not in Canada; they are in the United States.

I would like a couple of answers to the questions I laid out. They are fair, and they are non-partisan. I think there is something we need to work on to grow our energy and our resource industry as a major economic driver. Along with that would be our agriculture industry as well. We have seen fertilizer reduction targets. We have seen industrial carbon tax. We have seen carbon tax 2.0 being added to farming. This has increased farmers' cost of doing business, and we have then seen the price of food go up also.

I would love an answer from my colleague from across the way, and I will follow up in a minute.

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, when the Liberal government was first elected in 2015, it killed 16 major resource projects and chased $176 billion out of the Canadian economy. This resulted in thousands of lost jobs in my city alone, and Bill C-69 continues to make it impossible to build the pipelines needed to unleash our resources and restore our economic independence.

I asked in June whether the Prime Minister would commit on that day to cancelling Justin Trudeau's “no more pipelines” bill, Bill C-69. The response from the new minister was to say:

We will support new pipelines if there is a national consensus in favour of them. With our country's facing American tariffs, we must strengthen our energy and natural resources sectors. There is no question that energy is Canada's power. We will help build the strongest economy in the G7, create jobs for Canadians and give the best cards to our negotiators at the negotiating table.

Canada's new government will win this trade war.

There is a lot to unpack in that response. To start with, the minister said, “if there is a national consensus”. They do not have a consensus even in their own caucus about pipelines. How are they going to have a consensus? The word “consensus” means that every single person agrees, and that is not a reasonable bar for the government, or any government, to set for whether there will be something as critical to our economy as pipelines to be built.

He talked about “the strongest economy in the G7”. Canada arguably has, and actually this is probably not even arguable but instead a fact, the weakest economy in the G7 right now. We have declining per capita GDP as we speak, and over the last number of years, while the government has been in power, Canadians have been getting poorer. Per capita GDP has been declining. This is a decline in the living standard of Canadians that the government has presided over.

Liberals are talking about jobs and about the importance of energy, but the government has spent literally 10 years chasing capital out of Canada, chasing jobs out of Canada and doing everything it can to strangle the energy industry in Canada. Therefore it is hard to take at face value the mixed words about claiming to support energy, when its response is, for example, to bring in a bill, Bill C-5, which gives the government the power to interfere politically, to decide and to pick and choose when it wants to dispense with the rule of its own laws and not apply the laws it created that are preventing private investors from building infrastructure in this country.

The government could just do as I asked in my question, or what we have been calling for for the last 10 years: Get rid of Bill C-69, get rid of Bill C-48, get rid of the emissions cap, get rid of the industrial carbon tax, get rid of the EV mandates, repeal the so-called clean fuel standard it brought in, rein in its spending, bring in a balanced budget, restore the public finances of the country, establish conditions upon which private investment can once again flourish in this country and get Canadians back to work in the energy industry so we can supply clean, reliable energy to the world.

Oil and Gas Industry

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

Mr. Speaker, back in June, I asked the government how many new pipeline projects we could expect completed within the next two years.

I would point out that over the last dozen years, the government has cancelled a dozen pipelines and 14 LNG projects because of the changes it brought to the legislation right here in Canada.

In response to the question I asked in June, the government replied that this was a golden opportunity to vote in favour of Bill C-5, which basically makes a workaround to all the terrible legislation the Liberals put in place over the last 10 years and allows the cabinet to pick and choose its favourite projects going forward. Bill C-5 was promised to build the economy of tomorrow.

As one could expect, we waited with bated breath over the summer to see what was going to happen. We had worked to expedite Bill C-5. We were fundamentally opposed to the idea that Bill C-5 would, basically, work around the rule of law in Canada and allow cabinet to pick and choose. However, we said that if this is what it would take to make Canada an “energy superpower”, which were the words of the Prime Minister, we would support Bill C-5 with the expectation that we would see major energy projects proposed clear across this country, from east-west pipelines to west coast pipelines.

Given the fact that Bill C-69 and Bill C-48 were the major impediments to these major pipelines, and given that Bill C-5 was basically skirting around these two pieces of legislation, which we have been calling for the repeal of for nearly a decade, we were saying that if the government got rid of these bills, these projects would go. The Liberals said they were not going to do that but would have a workaround.

We expected that over the summer we would see the government pick a number of projects, particularly oil pipelines for energy to the west and east coasts, getting our energy to market and making Canada the “energy superpower”. However, we did not see that. What we saw was 66,000 jobs lost in Alberta over this year. Excluding COVID-19, it is the worst job loss in Alberta since 2017. Last month, total unemployment hit its highest mark since May 2016, again, excluding COVID-19.

This slump cannot be totally blamed on what is happening south of the border. This is entirely because the major projects of our country are being completed: The Site C dam is basically done, and the west coast LNG project is basically over. We see that the government has failed entirely.

We have watched billions of dollars exit this country. We had the energy east pipeline, the northern gateway pipeline and the Pacific northwest pipeline that were going to be built, but they are not going on. We had 15 LNG projects on the books ready to go back in 2015; today, one of them has been built.

I guess the question still remains. Back to reality, we have passed Bill C-5, and we have yet to see any new major energy projects coming online. There has been delay after delay. Will the government be proposing major energy pipelines across this country under Bill C-5?

Natural Resources

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Madam Speaker, I appreciate that kind of, sort of answer. There was a lot of word salad there. I heard “build back better” again. As I always say, instead of build back better, I would love it if the Liberals put it back the way they found it.

One question I have for the member across the way is this: We just brought in a new bill for the Major Projects Office to get things fast-tracked, but we could have just repealed Bill C-48 and Bill C-69. I have not heard much conversation on this, but Bill C-69 was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. The government has never even talked about that or tried to make Bill C-69 better.

We need to repeal it. Without repealing Bill C-48 and Bill C-69 and getting rid of the industrial carbon tax, it will be virtually impossible to convince proponents to come forward to build these major projects. We heard that from a letter signed by 100 CEOs about how hard it is to find proponents because of that legislation—

Opposition Motion—Oil and Gas Emissions Cap

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure for me to rise to speak in the House on behalf of the people of Calgary Midnapore.

The motion we have before us today is, "That the House call on the Prime Minister to immediately repeal the oil and gas emissions cap, which in effect is a production cap.” We are standing here today talking about the emissions cap, but what we are really talking about is not just the emissions cap. We are talking about the future of a nation.

Failure is not an option here. Failure is not an option, because hundreds of thousands of jobs are on the line. Failure is not an option, because seniors are starving and are going to food banks. They are on fixed incomes. They do not know where they are going to find their next meal. Failure is not an option, because we have record youth unemployment. This is an epidemic in our country. Failure is not an option, because housing costs are through the roof. Failure is not an option, because investment is fleeing this country.

When we are talking about the emissions cap, we are talking about the obstacles that the Liberal government created for over a decade, obstacles that prevented Canada from becoming a prosperous nation. We are a nation today that has created a system of dependence and a culture of desperation, one that could have been avoided by investing in our natural resources sector.

The Prime Minister won his mandate for one reason, and one reason only. Canadians, for better or for worse, put their trust in him to do what he said he was going to do: build a prosperous Canada.

The Conservatives gracefully supported Bill C-5 in the spring. We want to see the government succeed in its major projects. We did everything we could to give licence to the government. We wanted to give the Prime Minister everything he needed to begin these major projects, to fulfill his promise to Canadians. However, we have yet to see one new project announced or one shovel in the ground.

Relative to today's motion, we have yet to see the Prime Minister commit to taking the first steps to achieving these major projects, of which eliminating the production cap is only one step. We have offered the following suggestions to the Prime Minister and the Liberal government several times, on which they refused to act: repeal Bill C-69 and repeal Bill C-48.

Bill C-69, as members will remember, is the “no more pipelines” bill, the bill that prohibits any type of genuine infrastructure being built in this country that allows for our prosperity. Bill C-48, the “no more tankers” ban, does not permit Canada to export its natural resources abroad.

We could also eliminate the industrial carbon tax. The government likes to say it has eliminated the carbon tax. We know that this is not true. The industrial carbon tax still exists, and this is another step that the Prime Minister needs to take, in addition to immediately repealing the oil and gas emissions cap.

Until the Liberals take these steps, they have yet to prove to us, the official opposition, and to Canadians that they are serious about digging us out of this hole that they created and restoring quality of life to Canadians. Canadians are suffering.

The government just received an F from Food Banks Canada on food security. One cannot get a worse grade than an F. Canadians earning less than $75,000 are spending 57.3% on groceries, utilities and transportation. Food inflation is rising 70% faster than the government's inflation target. For all of these reasons, Canadians are suffering. For all of these reasons, the Prime Minister needs to keep his promise of restoring Canada's prosperity.

What hope has the Prime Minister given the official opposition? What hope has the Prime Minister given Canadians? His record from before he arrived in the House of Commons is not encouraging. We all know the best predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour, so let us take a look at the past behaviour of the Prime Minister.

When asked by the leader of the official opposition at industry committee if he supported Justin Trudeau's decision to veto the Northern Gateway pipeline, the Prime Minister replied, “given both [the] environmental and commercial reasons...I think it's the right decision.” That is interesting. It sounds like a 180 compared with his position today.

Then, just six months later, at COP26, the Prime Minister said, “we have...far, far too many fossil fuels in the world” and “as much as half of oil reserves, proven reserves, need to stay in the ground”. These are words from a Prime Minister who is trying to convince us that he wants to restore the promise of Canada and restore the prosperity of Canada. How can Canadians be encouraged by these words or believe his sincerity about doing something?

Let us look at his record since he got here, which is also an indicator that his actions match his words. Everyone knows that the right thing to do when preparing to do something is to underpromise and over-deliver. Let us see if the Prime Minister has in fact done this. This is the most basic of lessons for anyone, whether it is in Dale Carnegie or for schoolchildren. It is to underpromise and over-deliver.

All major projects that have been announced to date were projects that were previously announced. No oil pipeline made that list of major projects. Without introducing a budget, the Prime Minister has doubled the deficit, which is expected to be the largest non-pandemic deficit in Canadian history, giving us the fastest-shrinking economy in the G7 after he promised the fastest growth; homebuilding dropping like a rock, when he promised to double homebuilding; and a record $54 billion in investment that has fled the country.

The Prime Minister won the election on his message of “elbows up”, saying that he was the person to handle Donald Trump's threats of tariffs and annexation. Today, the tariffs remain in place, with 50% on steel and aluminum and 25% on autos. Can I point out the obvious fact? There is no trade deal signed. For all of these reasons, we must question the Prime Minister's sincerity and his ability to deliver on what he said he would do.

The next thing we have to look at is the team that the Prime Minister has surrounded himself with. We look at the present Minister of Canadian Identity and Culture, who stated, “COP28 calls for groundbreaking goals to triple renewable energy [and] double energy efficiency, and, for the first time ever, we reached a historic consensus to move away from fossil fuels in energy systems.” He went on to say about pipelines:

The atmosphere and our climate certainly don't need them. Many of us believe we cannot build pipelines and meet our international climate commitments at the same time.

And with the world working around the clock to avoid the worst effects of climate change, it makes no sense from an ethical and a moral perspective to produce and ship more of a substance that is causing a problem, that disrupts the future of our children and our grandchildren.

This was from a minister close to the Prime Minister.

In addition, we have the words of the Alberta premier. She said, “I am very concerned the Prime Minister has appointed what appears to be yet another anti-oil and gas Environment Minister.... Not only is she a self-proclaimed architect of the designation of plastics as toxic, but she is a staunch advocate against oil sands expansion, proponent of phasing out oil and gas”. The premier also said she was put off by the minister's close ties to long-time thorn in her side, the Minister of Identity and Culture, to whom the current Minister of Environment served as parliamentary secretary for four years.

When we look at the motion that was presented here today, we see it is clear that the Prime Minister is not sincere. As a young woman in university, I was to meet my sister to show her around the university, but I did not meet her. Instead, I spent time with my friends, and when I got home, I got a lecture from my father. He told me that sincerity is doing what one says one is going to do.

It is time for the Prime Minister to keep the promise he made to Canadians in order to win the election and do what he said he was going to do, and that starts with eliminating the production cap.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the Trudeau Liberals, who were very much the same as these Liberals, passed Bill C-48, which was explicitly designed to block pipelines from going to northern B.C.

Would the member have supported Bill C-48 had he been in the House at that time?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the approach of the Prime Minister on energy issues is much the same as the approach of Justin Trudeau, which was to feign interest in energy development and, at the same time, pile on barriers to make it effectively very difficult, if not impossible, for projects to move forward.

The member asked what our plan would be. When Conservatives were in government, we had major pipelines move forward, and we had a fifth, the northern gateway project, approved. The government passed Bill C-48, which was designed to kill that project. It piled additional regulations never seen before on any project on the energy east pipeline, which were designed to prevent that project from going forward. Then it acted surprised when the private sector pulled back in response to the additional burden it imposed.

Is this not just more of the same Liberal approach to energy, which is to feign interest but pile on things, such as a production cap, that make it nearly impossible to move forward?

Natural Resources

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Swift Current—Grasslands—Kindersley, SK]

Mr. Speaker, it has been six months and the so-called new Liberal government seems like it is the same as the old one. At first, the Prime Minister sounded different from Justin Trudeau, but we are finding, as time goes by, that the Liberals are using the same old Liberal playbook. He hinted about a fast track to build a pipeline. What actually happened? He created a major project bureaucracy instead to try to fast-track big projects. Not a single pipeline is on the major projects list, as the Liberals have reannounced previous projects that are already under construction. They kept in place bad anti-energy policies from the Trudeau era: Bill C-69, Bill C-48, the oil and gas production cap and the industrial carbon tax, to name a few.

Enbridge, a Canadian energy company, is building a $700-million pipeline project. The problem is that it is not in Canada. It is in the United States of America.

Canadians will have to wait for a Conservative government to support our world-class energy sector that will cut bad Liberal policies, build a strong economy to get the job done and restore the promise of our great country.

Employment

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Madam Speaker, I very much appreciate having the opportunity this evening to speak about the metastasizing unemployment crisis that is facing this country. We have seen over the course of the summer that new reports demonstrate a continuously worsening situation, although I think it is important to say as well that this is the continuation of a three-year trend. It is not as if things were rosy and then all of a sudden unemployment got bad; this is the continuation of a running trend of worsening employment numbers. The unemployment rate overall is at 7.1%.

Things are getting worse for people of all ages. I want to be clear that it is not only young people who are facing this challenge, but it is particularly acute for them. The employment rate for young people in Canada is now at a more-than-25-year low. We have to go back to before the year 2000, which I think is three Liberal prime ministers ago, to find a situation where the youth employment rate was lower than it is now outside of the acute phase of the COVID pandemic. We are clearly in a situation where, for young people, we are already at recession levels of employment. This is a concern for many reasons. It is a concern because of the pain that young people are experiencing. The combination of housing being so difficult to access, out of reach for most, and a situation where employment is increasingly out of reach is leading to a lot of frustration and even despondency in the next generation.

Adding to that, youth unemployment, I think, is an indicator of broader problems in the economy. When companies are pessimistic about the future, their first step is not to let go of senior staff but to not give as many opportunities to those who are just entering the workforce. I think that is a reality, so the youth unemployment rate is a concern in its own right and also for what it indicates about the health of the economy.

We see also how the cost of living crisis is contributing to the unemployment situation. The latest report from Statistics Canada outlines how more people are working multiple jobs because they need the extra money to get by. More people are asking for additional hours from their employer, again because they need the income to pay for basic expenses. The fact that people are struggling because of the cost of living crisis is contributing to more pressure on the labour market, so we have these interconnected, compounding problems. This really is the outworking of a number of different policy failures.

For 10 years we have had a Liberal government that has not been able to support the moving forward of major infrastructure projects that our economy needs. It has put in place Bill C-48, Bill C-69, a production cap and an industrial carbon tax; these policies are blocking development that would help young people get to work. We have seen increasing red tape and other barriers put in front of small businesses that make it harder for them to do business in Canada and to create jobs for young people. We have seen immigration failures, and that is why Conservatives have proposed essential reforms, so that young people can get back to work. We see policy failures contributing to the cost of living crisis, as well as poor alignment with respect to training policy. Many different policy failures have led to the situation.

We need to see a plan from the government, a plan that involves reversing some of these failures. Where is the plan?

Regional Economic Development

[Jonathan Rowe, Conservative, Terra Nova—The Peninsulas, NL]

Mr. Speaker, the Liberal government promised nation-building projects, including building the green energy corridor. It has all the tools required, yet nothing has been built in the past six months, and the only projects announced are the ones already under way.

The people of Canada and Newfoundland and Labrador want to see action from the Liberal government. An energy corridor would connect Labrador to the rest of the country without other provinces taking the icing and the cake and leaving my province with the crumbs. The government will not repeal Bill C-69 and Bill C-48, the production caps or the industrial carbon tax. It will not even commit to its own promise of building an energy corridor from sea to sea.

It is time for the Liberal government to get out of its own way, stop breaking its promises and use the tools it has, because it is time to get to work.

Economic Development

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, Canadians still pay the price for the lost, anti-development Liberal decade. Six months ago, to get elected, the Prime Minister promised to put shovels in the ground on big projects at unimaginable speeds, but what Canadians got was the same old Liberal bait and switch, photo ops and more bureaucracy, because the PM is just another Liberal.

The Liberals say five projects have made their secret list so far, some already approved and some already being built, but there is not a single pipeline to create Canadian jobs with Canadian steel and pay for programs that all Canadians want.

Conservatives worked to improve and pass Bill C-5, but it is not enough to get back the $60 billion that left Canada due to Liberal red tape. Bill C-5 admits that the Liberals' own laws blocked building. They must scrap the “no new pipelines, never build anything anywhere” Bill C-69; the shipping ban, Bill C-48; Canadian energy censorship; the Liberal oil and gas cap; and the federal industrial carbon tax so Canada can compete.

Conservatives want to unleash natural resources to make a strong, united Canada self-reliant, affordable—

One Canadian Economy Act

[Steven Bonk, Conservative, Souris—Moose Mountain, SK]

Mr. Speaker, as Conservatives, we are happy when any project finally gets built in this country, after 10 years of the Liberal government trying to stop everything, but this is an example of the Liberal government causing problems and creating a new program to try to fix them.

Why would the member not just tell his caucus to please just scrap Bill C-69 and Bill C-48?

[Dan Muys, Conservative, Flamborough—Glanbrook—Brant North, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we are now at third reading of Bill C-5, our final opportunity in the House to speak to the legislation before it moves to the Senate.

Let me start here: Canadians are not short on talent, we are not short on ambition, and we are certainly not short on natural resources. What we are short on is a government that knows how to unleash that potential and get things built. I hear all the time that people are ready to work, businesses want to expand and communities are waiting for critical infrastructure, but over and over again we run into the same thing: bureaucratic bottlenecks, over-regulation, and a government more interested in announcing headline-grabbing projects than permitting economically important ones.

The bill is about getting big things built, and that should matter a whole lot. Faced with the economic challenges of their own creation, the Liberals have said numerous times recently that this is the moment. What would have met the moment is scrapping Bill C-69, scrapping the shipping ban, and scrapping the oil and gas production cap and the industrial carbon tax.

At committee, Conservatives rolled up our sleeves and got to work. We saw that the bill would create a series of loopholes that would have allowed ministers and the prime minister to bypass Canada's ethics laws, the Conflict of Interest Act, lobbying rules, the protections under the Criminal Code, and the Auditor General Act, among others. Under the original draft of the bill, a minister could have approved a project that would benefit their own investments, and no one would have been the wiser.

We also saw that the bill as originally drafted would have given the government too much power, so we fought back, and we won. With the support of opposition colleagues, Conservative MPs passed amendments to close loopholes, ensure stricter controls and bring about transparency and accountability.

We made sure that public office holders would have to recuse themselves in the event of a conflict. We established a mandatory national security review for foreign state-owned proponents. We added a public registry of projects, clear rationales and a timeline to publish criteria within 15 days of royal assent. We created a mechanism for parliamentary oversight, requiring regular reporting. We mandated public consultation reporting. We forbade the government from exercising extraordinary powers when Parliament is dissolved or prorogued.

Conservatives made the bill better. We delivered transparency, oversight and guardrails. I want to thank my colleagues on the transport committee for their hard work.

However, let me be clear: While we made it better, we cannot pretend that the bill is the be-all and end-all of meeting the moment. Let us look at part 1 of the bill, which is about free trade and labour mobility within Canada. It sounds ambitious, but in reality, it is far more limited. There are no binding timelines, no penalties for delays, no incentives for provinces to actually remove trade barriers and no framework for a blue seal licensing standard that would allow professionals such as engineers, nurses and skilled tradespeople to work across the country based on national credentials.

At committee, we heard from Catherine Swift, president of the Coalition of Concerned Manufacturers and Businesses of Canada, who summed it up well: Canada has been talking about internal trade for three decades, report after report, announcement after announcement, but it is still not nearly enough meaningful action. The fear is that the bill would only add to that pile and it would become just another press release without a solid plan to move forward.

That is why Conservatives have been proposing a better way to provide financial incentives for provinces that eliminate barriers, which would be a win-win; it would boost GDP, increase revenues and allow provinces to reinvest in important infrastructure projects. The IMF has estimated that removing internal trade barriers could raise Canada's GDP by as much as 4%. That is real growth, real paycheques and real opportunity, but very little of that is in Bill C-5. Again, the bill does not do enough to seriously address the economic headwinds that Canada is facing.

Now I will go on to part 2 of the bill, the building Canada act. This section is supposed to fast-track major projects that are in the national interest, but instead of real reform, we get a selective shortcut. We get all the red tape, bills like Bill C-69 and Bill C-48 remain in place, and there are no clear criteria for what makes a project eligible. There is no certainty for investors, just more discretion handed to the ministers who have failed to deliver time and time again.

Yes, Conservatives improved the bill at committee, but flaws remain. We heard from Dr. Exner-Pirot, director of natural resources, energy and environment at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, at committee. She warned us very bluntly that global capital is mobile. Investors are not going to wait around for a country that takes years to approve a pipeline or transmission line. In fact, they are not waiting; they are going to the United States, they are going to Australia and they are going to Norway, to countries with the same environmental standards but faster, clearer and more reliable approval processes.

We cannot ignore the warning signs. Canada has dropped in global rankings for competitiveness. A lack of clarity, slow timelines and politicized approvals are driving investment away. Conservatives believe in a better path: one-and-done approvals, a national energy corridor and shovel-ready zones. We all want to see worthy projects proceed, not just the ones that are politically favourable that particular week or month.

We are in an era of fierce global competition, urgent infrastructure needs and historic opportunity. While the legislation sets a framework, there is more to be done. There needs to be a clear model for approvals, and impediments to approval need to be cleared, such as, again, Bill C-69, Bill C-48, the production cap, and the industrial carbon tax.

It is important that we step back for a moment and look at the bigger picture. Canada, in the past decade, has ranked dead last in the G7 for economic growth, and 80% to 90% of our energy exports still go to the United States at a discount. Our farmers, miners and manufacturers are boxed in by regulations that serve no one. As the Canadian Chamber of Commerce told us, internal trade barriers act like a self-imposed 21% tariff, and yet we wonder why productivity is stagnant, investment is down and young Canadians cannot find opportunities at home.

Meanwhile, Trump's tariffs are escalating. Our competitors are attracting investment while we are repelling it. The government's answer cannot be another layer of process and platitudes, more bureaucracy and empty promises while opportunity slips away. We are in a moment that calls for ambition, that calls for reform and that calls for leadership. Instead, the government gives us something that sounds good but fails when it meets the reality of the Canadian economy, and Bill C-5, despite the title, despite the spin, still does not do enough to change that.

With the final vote in the House expected shortly, Bill C-5 is poised to become law by Canada Day. Conservatives made it more transparent, more accountable and more secure. We stood up for taxpayers, we shut the back door to insider influence and we forced the government to answer for its overreach. Conservatives made Bill C-5 better, but many challenges remain. Canada is falling behind because we make it too hard to build, too hard to work across provinces and too hard to trade within our own borders. Canada has everything the world wants and needs; we need to address what is holding us back.

Bill C-5 takes a small step forward. Is it enough? No. Is it the right direction for a change? Yes, and that is why we will not hold up this modicum of progress. We are the party of building, and so we will not stop fighting for real change. We will hold the government to account for what gets done for the results. We will keep fighting for what really matters: paycheques, productivity, and a future that unleashes Canada's great potential for everyone.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, Bill C-5 proves one thing for certain: The Liberals broke the system, and Canadians pay the price. An unprecedented $5 trillion of Canadian capital went south and into other countries, and they killed $670 billion in major natural resource projects that could have been built by Canadians with Canadian aluminum and steel for Canada's economic strength, self-reliance, security and unity. In five years alone, 16 major projects were sidelined because of them. It cost Canadians over $176 billion in lost nuclear, critical mineral mines, LNG terminals, pipelines, indigenous-led projects and energy corridors delayed or derailed by lawsuits, bureaucracy, delay and Liberal policies.

Imagine how powerful and self-reliant Canada would be today. Instead, Canada ranks last in the G7 for development, and the Liberals now scramble to patch what they themselves destroyed. Bill C-5 would not fix the fundamentals. It admits failure, with hundreds of thousands of Canadian job losses and more to come, unaffordable power and fuel, and skyrocketing costs of essentials. What the Liberals have to do is what the Conservatives said all along. They should scrap Bill C-69, Bill C-48, the federal industrial carbon tax, the Canadian oil and gas cap and all their other antidevelopment policies and laws.

Proponents today still face unclear rules, no concrete timelines, interference and limited transparency. As the transport minister said herself in committee, “we have come to a place in Canada where we have such a thicket of processes, rules and regulations...that we are unable to build with the alacrity that this moment in time requires.” It is not during just this current moment that major projects cannot get built in Canada with brisk and cheerful readiness. That has been the worsening reality of the last decade of Liberal antidevelopment laws, policies and messages. That dense, cumbersome thicket was created by the very same government that claims to be new while half the ministers are the old ones.

Conservatives offer real solutions: to cut red tape, gatekeepers and taxes; to create clear rules; to attract private investment; and to fast-track major projects for the benefit of all Canadians. The place the Liberals should start is with all the projects stuck in the federal queue right now, such as the Ksi Lisims LNG project, LNG Canada phase two and Bruce Power upgrades, and they should be looking at the dedicated west coast export pipeline to serve Asian energy demand that they killed 10 years ago and indigenous-backed roads to unlock the Ring of Fire. They are in the national interest, and they are waiting for a green light. They should be on the national interest list and fast-tracked yesterday.

Nevertheless, Conservatives worked in good faith with other opposition parties and with the Liberals to help improve Bill C-5, and here I want to thank the Conservative team for all its efforts. It will be up to the Liberals to deliver on their rhetoric and to keep up all their big, but vague, promises to Canadians. It will ultimately be up to Canadians to determine whether they do, and Conservatives will hold them accountable in the meantime.

Even now, Bill C-5 sets up a politically driven and determined process. Ministers will decide who goes ahead and who waits. They can even one day decide a project that they said was in the national interest earlier is no longer and remove it from the list or whatever ad hoc review a responsible minister determines. This is a problem I tried to fix: inherent uncertainty, huge powers behind closed doors and not a permanent fix or way to regulate and review projects in the sector most important to Canada's economy, imperative to help turn poverty into prosperity and to help lower emissions globally.

Bill C-5 blurs the lines, just as Bill C-69 did. What is worse is that the Liberals know it. At committee, the Canada-U.S. trade minister admitted, quote, whoever puts forward these projects, be they public, private, indigenous, provincial or municipal, does not have to go through an evaluation and approvals process that could take five to six years. He admits the Liberal system takes years and delays building. It is not clear whether projects that are actually in provincial or municipal jurisdiction may end up in the Bill C-5 queue for a federal review, which would be a similar overreach problem to that in Bill C-69. The mix of public and private infrastructure should cause taxpayers to take notice too, but again the obvious first step should be to fix that whole evaluations and approvals process the minister himself says is too long.

Proponents and the government itself are trapped by the red tape they imposed. Still, Bill C-5 does not fix it for everyone; it will fast-track a chosen few. At first, it did not even define “national interest”, which left every decision to the whims of cabinet and a lack of clarity for everyone involved, but Conservatives fought to require the government to define national interest with clear, specific criteria. We succeeded in adding that necessary clarity and structure to a process that started with none.

Conservatives also successfully incorporated the requirement of a public list of national interest projects, with timelines, estimated costs and rationale; application of the Conflict of Interest Act to officials and proponents to prevent abuse and prevent politically connected insiders from pursuing personal profit over the public interest behind closed doors; mandatory national security reviews for hostile regimes and state-owned investments into major national interest projects to combat foreign interference and economic imperialism from adversaries and to protect Canadian sovereignty and security; a requirement for the government to fully deliver on its mandatory duty to consult and a clear map for indigenous consultation, with public reporting to build trust, earn confidence and respect indigenous rights and title so that major projects can get to yes in a good way, with minimization of predictable court challenges and delays; and annual independent reviews of project progress so all Canadians can measure the Liberals by their actions, not just their words, and hold them accountable.

These amendments matter. They bring transparency, accountability, more certainty, more clarity and integrity to a bill that originally had none.

However, even with these improvements, major concerns remain. Bill C-5 would still allow ministers the power to remove a project from the national interest list at any time, without notice, reason or recourse. I proposed to remove the power to take projects off the list once they make the cut, because that uncertainty may continue to push investors and builders to other countries with clearer rules and more predictability, just as the Liberals have done to Canada for the past decade.

Since delay is death to major projects, Conservatives also aimed to give concrete timelines that do not actually exist in Bill C-5, despite all the Liberals' claims about a two-year process. I proposed a one-year deadline to issue permits once a project is designated; a 90-day limit for the Governor in Council, the cabinet, to make final decisions; and a requirement to prioritize private or public-private funding to protect taxpayers, to prioritize private funding. Canada should be a place where the private sector can take big risks and build big things on its time and on its dime, not where taxpayers have to be on the hook to get anything done.

The Liberals rejected those amendments.

Then I brought forward an amendment to apply the Conflict of Interest Act to enforce clearer safeguards to prevent corruption and block Liberals from stacking the deck in favour of their friends. This should not be necessary, of course, but we have a Prime Minister who hides his conflicts and where he pays his taxes, and who ran to make the company Brookfield invested in all the kinds of projects that Bill C-5 would fast-track, although under the Prime Minister, it mostly invested in the U.S. and abroad. This caused a flurry and a huddle among Liberal MPs, a couple of odd questions, and then the Liberals voted against it. Thanks to Conservative pressure and support from another opposition party, we forced the government to follow its own laws designed to prevent corruption and to put the public interest ahead of partisanship.

Conservatives also got limits put on cabinet to prevent it from exempting 15 foundational laws that no government should ever sidestep. All Canadians can be forgiven for wondering why the Liberals would have presented such a potentially significant law free from all of those laws in the first place. Conservatives pushed crucial amendments to ensure provincial consultation and to protect provincial jurisdiction and provincial decision-making power, because what the Liberals must show is that they can ensure big projects in federal jurisdiction can be built for Canada's economic strength, security and national unity, not meddle in others. They have to find a will, a spine, a set that they have failed to show in the past decade in order to enforce their own jurisdiction, to treat the national interest approvals according to the general advantage of Canada and to uphold legal and jurisdictional certainty so that proponents can build their projects when approvals face challenges and obstruction. Otherwise, this will all be big talk and a lot of delays without fixing the real problems, which are the antidevelopment laws and policies the Liberals themselves decided they needed this queue-jumping Bill C-5 to work around.

Conservatives' work continues today, with subamendments to clarify and fix flaws. We proposed a parliamentary committee with a nongovernment Chair. No government should judge its own actions. Democratic accountability anchors this principle, so the subamendment strengthens review with independent, balanced representation across parties. Canadians expect transparency, not spectacle. They expect real checks, not blanket approval.

Canada holds vast potential. Natural resources, energy and infrastructure sustain millions of jobs, fund public services, build communities and bolster global trade. Any bill for national development must reflect this reality and champion, not hinder, the sectors that drive prosperity. Canadians need an approach that does not curb ambition, repel investment or deny opportunity. Canada cannot tolerate a framework that casts resource development as a threat rather than a strength. Canada demands confidence, not caution, and momentum, not paralysis.

Conservatives champion responsible resource development, independent oversight and a united Canada, and our amendments to Bill C-5 uphold those values. Conservatives believe in strong paycheques and unity through opportunity, not division and double standards through federal overreach. We believe in reconciliaction through—

Oil and Gas Industry

[Marc Dalton, Conservative, Pitt Meadows—Maple Ridge, BC]

Mr. Speaker, Canada's number one export is oil. It is a source of prosperity and provides for health care, infrastructure and good-paying jobs, yet 10 years of Liberal anti-energy laws have kept pipelines from being built and have kept us dependent upon the U.S. markets, with laws like Bill C-69, the no new pipelines act; Bill C-48, the shipping ban; the energy production cap; and the industrial carbon tax. Energy companies will not build, because of these laws.

When will the Liberals finally end their war on Canadian energy and jobs?