Bill C-68 (Historical)

An Act to amend the Fisheries Act and other Acts in consequence

This enactment amends the Fisheries Act to, among other things,
(a) require that, when making a decision under that Act, the Minister shall consider any adverse effects that the decision may have on the rights of the Indigenous peoples of Canada recognized and affirmed by section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, include provisions respecting the consideration and protection of Indigenous knowledge of the Indigenous peoples of Canada, and authorize the making of agreements with Indigenous governing bodies to further the purpose of the Fisheries Act;
(b) add a purpose clause and considerations for decision-making under that Act;
(c) empower the Minister to establish advisory panels and to set fees, including for the provision of regulatory processes;
(d) provide measures for the protection of fish and fish habitat with respect to works, undertakings or activities that may result in the death of fish or the harmful alteration, disruption or destruction of fish habitat, including in ecologically significant areas, as well as measures relating to the modernization of the regulatory framework such as authorization of projects, establishment of standards and codes of practice, creation of fish habitat banks by a proponent of a project and establishment of a public registry;
(e) empower the Governor in Council to make new regulations, including regulations respecting the rebuilding of fish stocks and importation of fish;
(f) empower the Minister to make regulations for the purposes of the conservation and protection of marine biodiversity;
(g) empower the Minister to make fisheries management orders prohibiting or limiting fishing for a period of 45 days to address a threat to the proper management and control of fisheries and the conservation and protection of fish;
(h) prohibit the fishing of a cetacean with the intent to take it into captivity, unless authorized by the Minister, including when the cetacean is injured, in distress or in need of care; and
(i) update and strengthen enforcement powers, as well as establish an alternative measures agreements regime; and
(j) provide for the implementation of various measures relating to the maintenance or rebuilding of fish stocks.
The enactment also makes consequential amendments to other Acts.

Opposition Motion—Leadership on Climate Change and Clean Energy

[Robert-Falcon Ouellette, Liberal, Winnipeg Centre, MB]

Mr. Speaker, a lot of the environmental programs we see do not have to be a windmill or solar power panels we see outside buildings. In fact, they can actually be about energy efficiency and the things we do on a day-to-day level to ensure that we actually save energy and use the good types of energy.

For instance, our government is ensuring that we are a model for sustainability by greening our government. We are on track to reduce the government's own greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030 and by 80% by 2050. Even when I was in the Canadian Armed Forces, there were many times, 20 years ago, when someone would leave the door open. We would be heating the outdoors, because someone thought it was too hot, and we were not able to actually turn down the heat. The government today is actually reviewing a lot of the policies on how we conduct ourselves in our day-to-day operations to see if there are energy savings. It is listening to people on the ground, asking civil servants, and even our military personnel, what we can do to ensure that we can meet that target. That takes a lot of effort, because it is going to be an effort by all Canadians to ensure that we actually get there.

I am proud of our government. Not only are we committed to those agreements but we are intent on actually trying to achieve those targets. It is not simply empty rhetoric. It is actually something we hold in our hearts to be true that we will get there if we work day in and day out, and we are doing that.

We are passing a number of bills that are repairing the damage from the decade of darkness. We are engaging with our international counterparts to ensure that we are going to be meeting those targets. For instance, we are changing legislation through Bill C-69 and Bill C-68. We have also introduced Bill C-74, and the list goes on.

Opposition Motion—Global Climate Change and Clean Energy Leadership

[Jonathan Wilkinson, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Environment and Climate Change]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Edmonton Mill Woods.

I am very pleased to stand in the House today to discuss the motion of my colleague, the hon. member for Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie.

I appreciate the call for Canada to be a global climate change leader. I agree, and Canada is. However, this motion fails in a number of areas, including its failure to recognize the actions the government has taken in ensuring that the environment and the economy go together as we build a clean energy economy. Our government has been steadfast in its belief that a strong economy and a clean environment go hand in hand. The NDP motion completely ignores the historic investments that the government has made through successive federal budgets that specifically address Canada's environment, coastlines, waterways, and wildlife, as well as the introduction of government legislation such as Bill C-69, Bill C-68, Bill C-57, and Bill C-74, which would further strengthen our ability to protect the environment and grow the economy in sustainable ways.

Today, I will highlight the global market for clean technologies and the enormous opportunity Canadians are already taking advantage of that is estimated to be in the trillions of dollars, with demand only increasing, and at an incredibly rapid pace.

This is an area I personally know very well, having spent the past almost 20 years as a chief executive officer and senior executive in the clean technology and renewable sector. The clean technology industry presents significant opportunities for Canadian businesses from all sectors of the economy. That is why investing in clean technology is a key component of our government's approach to promoting sustainable growth and to addressing key environmental challenges.

Our government also recognizes that clean technology is a source of good, well-paying jobs for Canadians. Therefore, when it comes to clean technology, Canada has the opportunity to be a true global leader, creating good, well-paying jobs for Canadians, while helping to meet our climate change and other important environmental goals.

Clean technologies are central to Canada’s low-carbon, globally competitive economy that provides high-quality jobs and opportunities for our middle class and those working hard to join it.

Clean technologies are by definition innovative technologies. Our government understands that innovation is a key driver of economic success. That is why we developed an innovation skills plan that will assist in making Canada a world-leading centre for innovation.

Today, clean technology already employs over 170,000 Canadians, and we sell about $26 billion annually in goods and services. Of that $26 billion, about $8 billion is exported.

Clearly, there is a strong appetite for Canadian innovation, but we have only just scratched the surface and there is so much more room to grow. That is why our government set aside more than $2.3 billion for clean technology in budget 2017. For the record, that is Canada's largest-ever public investment in this field. Prior to making this historic investment, we worked closely with industry to develop a comprehensive strategy that will successfully accelerate the development of the sector.

This $2.3 billion will support clean technology research, development, demonstration, and adoption and the scaling up of our businesses.

We know that access to financing fuels the growth of companies and provides the capital needed to hire new staff, develop products, and support sales at home and abroad, which is why we have set aside $1.4 billion in new financing for clean-tech providers. This is in addition to the $21.9 billion investment in green infrastructure, which will create jobs and position Canada for the low-carbon economy of the future.

We have also allocated $400 million to recapitalize Sustainable Development Technology Canada. This fund is helping our Canadian businesses develop world-class expertise in clean technology engineering, design, marketing, and management. To date, the fund has invested $989 million in 381 Canadian companies, supporting projects across the entire country. The funding has helped these companies develop and demonstrate new clean technologies that promote sustainable development, including those that address environmental issues, such as climate change, air quality, clean water, and clean soil.

There is also the Business Development Bank of Canada with its $700 million commitment to help clean technology producers scale up and expand globally. Since mid-January, I am pleased to say that four investments worth $40 million have been made. Through our participation in mission innovation, the Government of Canada will work with the international community to double federal investment in clean energy research and development over five years.

These are very significant and substantive investments, and we will drive for strong results. The government will carefully monitor the results of its investments both in terms of economic growth and jobs, as well as the environment.

Through a new clean-tech growth hub within Innovation Canada, the government will streamline client services, improve federal program coordination, enable tracking and reporting of clean technology results across government, and connect stakeholders to international markets. The clean growth hub is the government's focal point for all federal government supporting clean technology. Since launching in mid-January, the hub has served over 450 companies. This one-stop shop is a major innovative win for government that industry is already recognizing as a key step forward.

The 2017 Global Cleantech Innovation Index, which investigates where entrepreneurial companies are most likely to emerge over the next 10 years, ranked Canada fourth, up from seventh in 2014. Further, in January of this year, the Cleantech Group released a Global Cleantech 100 list. The list recognizes the clean-tech companies that are most likely to have significant market impact over the next five to 10 years.

Under the Harper government, Canada's share of the global clean-tech market shrunk by half. In partnership with the clean-tech industry, we have successfully turned this around. This year, a record 13 Canadian clean technology firms comprised the top 100. All the winning companies are clients of the Canadian trade commissioner service, and seven of the 13 companies are Export Development Canada customers.

We know that is only a small sampling of the innovative clean technology companies that are doing amazing work every day across the country to create economic growth, and solve our most pressing environmental challenges.

For example, in Montreal, GHGSat has developed the technology to monitor industrial greenhouse gas emissions using satellite technology. They launched their first satellite in 2016. In my own province of British Columbia, Carbon Engineering is developing a process to turn carbon dioxide in the air into a clean fuel. I could go on and on, speaking about all of the fantastic and innovative clean technology companies working across the country in so many industries and sectors of the Canadian economy.

In order to ensure their continued success, we will continue to collaborate with all stakeholders and jurisdictions across Canada to meet our climate change commitments and bring innovative and competitive clean technologies to market.

We have developed strong international linkages that promote Canadian technology as solutions to global challenges and attract private sector investment. This government is focused on scaling our great Canadian clean technology success stories, and in the process, helping to solve the world's most pressing environmental challenges.

As we move forward, the Government of Canada will continue to be a strong partner for clean technology producers. Our government is incredibly proud and impressed by the innovative work being done by the entrepreneurial women and men working in this sphere and we will continue to support them and their work, and with their success, generate future wealth for Canadians, while safeguarding the environment for future generations.

Report Stage

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

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to debate this very important bill, Bill C-68, which deals with changes to the Fisheries Act. I will point out that in general, the government's legislative agenda is floundering. It has clammed up. Liberals are trolling the bottom. They are trying desperately to get through as much legislation as they can, and they are doing it under repeated time allocation. I looked hard, and there are no pearls in this one. The government is putting forward these changes to the Fisheries Act in defiance of good sense.

Now, this bill is very important in my riding. Why do I say that? I represent a riding in Alberta, and there are not a lot of people who earn their living by fishing in Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan. However, the framework that existed before 2012 with respect to fisheries protection and navigable waters protection is quite perverse. Members have spoken about this already. It is the idea that it was pretty easy to get almost anything designated as fish habitat. If my kids are out playing in the yard one day, they dig a hole, it rains, and it fills up with water, maybe that is a fish habitat. All of a sudden, that requires all kinds of processes, consultations, and changes. That obviously does not make any sense.

More seriously, there were issues with farmers, people who were building ditches for drainage, very simple normal activities. Things would fill up with water and all of a sudden get designated as fish habitat, which would invoke all kinds of different protections, regulations, and red tape from the federal government.

I do not think it is rocket science or even fish science to say that we should be thinking more rationally and strategically about how we protect our fish stocks. Rather than having this sort of proliferation of designation of fish habitat—and navigable waters was another issue that was drawing in similar kinds of over-regulation—we would try to be strategic about protecting fish stocks. We would think about what those critical points of protection were. We would have strong regulations in those cases, and, at the same time, we would not be protecting things in the wrong way.

On this side of the House, we favour rational, effective, and, as much as possible, surgical regulation; that is, regulation that does the thing it is intended to do, and the repeal of regulation that does not do what it is intended to do, that is not connected to a clear, rational objective. That is why, for instance, when Conservatives were in government, every time we introduced a new regulation, we developed a structure so that there would have to be a corresponding removal of regulation. Any time that ministers wanted to bring in new regulations, they also had to think about removing other regulations. That is a good approach, because sometimes government fails to think about repealing old, irrelevant regulations, trying to tighten up and smarten the rules. Again, it is not about not having those protections in place; it is about ensuring that those protections are rational and effective, and actually associated with the objectives that the regulation is in fact intended to serve.

In 2012, the previous government brought forward changes that shifted the focus from protecting fairly arbitrarily defined fish habitat to actually protecting and preserving our fish stocks. That was a good approach. It was widely supported by civil society. It was not supported by some voices, but, generally speaking, those who saw the practical problems and the practical need for improvement supported our approach. Some parties in this House waved the flag and said that fewer waterways were protected. We were effectively protecting vital waterways and assuring that the farmer's ditch, that hole that my kids dug in the backyard, did not get designated as a waterway. There was an appropriate level of protection for places where fish actually live, and there was no merit in applying those regulations beyond their usefulness.

Unfortunately, the Liberal government has sort of drunk their own bathwater when it comes to these talking points. They have bought into these lines about how they need to go back to the old regulatory system, which piled on unnecessary red tape and made it harder to do any kind of development, but with no discernible objective.

I did want to say if one wants to talk about what actually is harmful to fish and what is harmful to waterways, let us talk about the decision by the former Liberal mayor of Montreal to dump raw sewage into the St. Lawrence Seaway, and the approval he received from the environment minister to do that. Raw sewage and the environment do not go hand in hand. However, the government wants to make it more difficult to do science-based development. It wants to make life harder for the energy sector. It put all kinds of barriers in the way of energy development and pipeline development. It wants to make it harder for municipalities to develop by putting unnecessary regulatory burdens in front of them, unless one is a well-connected, former Liberal MP who is the mayor of Montreal. Then if one wants to dump raw sewage in there, go for it.

How did the fish feel when that happened? Do fish feel? I do not know, but it was not good for their health, is the point.

I know members across the way are excited about this point but they cannot get around it. Our approach was one that actually protected fish habitat, that actually sought to protect fish stocks. It was science-based, it was consistent, and it was safe and effective.

My constituents often ask me about the double standards they see from the government. On the one hand, it talks about the environment. On the other hand, the government's approach to environmental policy is totally disconnected from reality, such as the piling of hurdles on the energy east pipeline. Again, there was Denis Coderre's strong opposition to the energy east pipeline because there might be some spill, allegedly. That was his line associated with that. At the same time, the government was not thinking about the impact on the fish from raw sewage. This is a floundering legislative agenda, indeed. Someone has heard me repeat that joke. However, they are hearing it for the first time. That is good.

There are a few other provisions in this bill that I want to touch on, in the time that I have left. The bill raises transparency concerns and due process concerns. For one thing it allows the minister to withhold critical information from interested proponents. We have heard a lot of discussion from the government about transparency, about sunny ways, and about how sunlight is the best disinfectant. However, we actually see in reality a consistent refusal to apply this lofty talk on transparency in practice. We see that happening and that certainly is disappointing. Again, we see cases of that in this particular piece of legislation.

This bill, as I said, piles on additional unnecessary regulations. It fails the test of being surgical and focused on achieving any clear, discernible result. This bill allows also for the establishment of advisory panels. These have former Liberal politicians and soon to be former Liberal politicians salivating, I am sure, about the opportunities of joining advisory panels for which they will be, no doubt, richly remunerated. However, there is no clarity around the guidance they will be required to give or the limitations on the use of these panels, or the conditions that they will be subject to.

The government, in creating more opportunities for patronage appointments, is not thinking about the fish. It is only thinking about the well-connected Liberal insiders. At the time of clam scam, one would think that it would want to avoid even the appearance of this kind of problem. Alas, it has not.

There are many concerns that we have with the bill: the problems for development, the troubling mechanisms, and other points I have not had time to get to. In any event, I will be opposing the bill.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will begin with a story. I will roll back to pre-2012.

My community of Abbotsford is the foremost farming community in the province of British Columbia. Somewhere in the order of 20% of all farm-gate revenues emanate from our community. Much of that is from two beautiful areas with A1-quality soil, Sumas Prairie and Matsqui Prairie, where there are all kinds of different farming operations under way.

I used to be a city councillor in Abbotsford. One of our farmers, who I will call Henry, was one of the pillars of our community. He was one of the originals in our community, one of the pioneers. He had farmed Sumas Prairie all his life. One day, he came into my office in a real fit of anger. He related to me that he had been on his land cleaning ditches that he himself had dug. A couple of years later, of course, those ditches were filling in with leaves, twigs, and other debris. He wanted to clear them so that his property could drain properly. Anyone who knows Sumas Prairie knows that it is an area that needs to be properly drained. It is a former lake bed, and it needs to be managed properly. However, Henry was in my office very upset, because as he was cleaning his ditch, a fisheries officer had approached him. By the way, he was a fisheries officer with a gun. He had accosted Henry and said, “Sir, don't you dare touch that ditch anymore. You're harming fish habitat.”

Of course, Henry said that this was a ditch he dug for drainage purposes, and there were no fish in this ditch. “It is fish habitat we are protecting”, said the fisheries officer, “and Mr. Farmer, you're not entitled to do anything with that ditch of yours.”

We heard this from farmers across Abbotsford. My colleague, the member for Langley—Aldergrove, who served on city council with me, can verify those facts. Of course, city council had no power. This was federal legislation under which these officers were acting. That is why our former Conservative government, in 2012, stepped up to the plate and addressed this problem. We removed the focus on what at that time was fish habitat, and we replaced it with a focus on protecting fish, because that is what it is all about.

In light of the situation I just described, our government first of all looked at what is called the harmful alteration, disruption, or destruction of fish habitat, or HADD. We said that HADD was the wrong standard to apply. What we should be applying is any activity that results in serious harm to fish, not fish habitat, that are part of a commercial, recreational, or aboriginal fishery or to the fish that support such a fishery. That is the way the new legislation read, and it was warmly received.

My colleague for Saanich—Gulf Islands, the leader of the Green Party, suggested that Canadian municipalities did not support our 2012 amendments at all. That is patently false. What we should do is ask those of us who were in municipal government at that time, or in the years leading up to it, and we can tell members exactly why this legislation was introduced, and we had the strong support of municipalities across Canada.

Another one of the challenges of the legislation we have before us, which is a big step backwards, is the use of what is called the precautionary principle, which is basically better safe than sorry. The precautionary principle sounds great. We should always be safe rather than sorry. The problem is that it does not work in real life.

I refer the House to an article written in 2011 by Jonathan Adler, in which he talks about the better safe than sorry approach, the precautionary principle. He says, “We all accept this as a commonsense maxim. But can it also guide public policy? [Some people] think so, and argue that formalizing a more 'precautionary' approach to...health and environmental...will better safeguard human well-being and the world around us.”

He goes on to say:

If only it were that easy. Simply put, the precautionary principle is not a sound basis for public policy. At the broadest level of generality, the principle is unobjectionable, but it provides no meaningful guidance to pressing policy questions. In a public policy context, “better safe than sorry” is a fairly vacuous instruction.

Taken literally, the precautionary principle is either wholly arbitrary or incoherent. In its stronger formulation, the principle actually has the potential to do harm.

He goes on to say, “Efforts to impose the principle through regulatory policy”, which is what our friends are doing here, but they are doing it in legislation, “inevitably accommodate competing concerns or become a Trojan Horse for other ideological crusades.”

The problem with the precautionary principle is that it becomes a Trojan Horse for ideological crusades. Let me give the House a great example.

We have a government here that has been beholden to the environmental movement. In fact, the chief of staff to the Prime Minister, Gerald Butts, used to lead the World Wildlife Fund in Canada. Think about it. When we have a precautionary principle, it is people that have influence in government that are able to, unnecessarily through their influence, direct decisions in a way that suits their interests. If we have an ideological predilection in a certain direction, like Mr. Butts does, imagine how quickly we would find ourselves in a situation where it is speculation and ideology that replace true science as a basis for making decisions.

This legislation would establish remunerated advisory panels. When Liberals establish advisory panels, especially ones that are remunerated, they are used basically to allow insiders and friends to benefit from government.

Look at the surf clam issue in Newfoundland where the fisheries minister intervened. He provided special gifts to his friends by taking a surf clam licence away from one company that had pioneered the surf clam business in Newfoundland and giving it to another company that had connections to insiders in government and to friends and family.

What was the end result? This new company, which did not even exist and is still not incorporated, had no boat. Imagine that. It had no boat, but was awarded this licence, thereby depriving the people of Grand Banks, Newfoundland, of their opportunity to benefit, to have livelihoods, to have income from this business.

This is what happens when legislation like Bill C-68, which would amend the Fisheries Act, is twisted in a way that benefits the Liberal government, insiders, and friends of the government.

Canada as a country can do better.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to rise and speak on Bill C-68 tonight. The comment that was made earlier this evening from one of my colleagues across the floor was that he was happy that a member from the west coast or a coastal riding was getting up and speaking about this. I am not picking on him for any reason, but I think it highlights one of the issues we are having with this bill. There seems to be a lack of knowledge or scope when it comes to our friends in the Liberal government not understanding the ramifications and implications that the decisions they are making with this bill will have on every region of the country. That is why we are seeing many of the rural members of Parliament from the Conservative side getting up to speak to this bill, because it will have very real and profound consequences on our rural communities.

I want to back things up prior to 2012, when these changes to the Navigable Waters Act and the Fisheries Act were made by the previous Conservative government. I recall I was a journalist at that time in a small community newspaper throughout southern Alberta. I remember covering numerous council and town hall meetings hosted by rural municipalities that were having significant issues when when it came to dealing with culverts, small bridges, drainage ditches, seasonal waterways, and irrigation canals, and the hoops, bureaucracy, and red tape they had to go through to try to complete some of those projects.

Prior to 2012, municipalities had to go through labour-intensive regulatory requirements when it came to areas of what was then called “navigable waters”. They were forced to endure lengthy delays, because the Department of Fisheries and Oceans was inundated with thousands of applications from municipalities that were waiting for it to come and make decisions on their projects, not to mention the length of those delays. It proved extremely costly to these municipalities that were having to endure these very long wait times. I would think many of us who have rural municipalities in our ridings understand that many of these municipalities are extremely small. They simply do not have the financial or staffing resources to be able to handle the workload and amount of paperwork that comes along with a Department of Fisheries and Oceans assessment. Therefore, our rural municipalities were coming to the previous Conservative government with these problems and issues with respect to managing their own lands. That is when the previous Conservative government came up with these changes to try to reduce some of that regulatory burden. We wanted to turn the focus to ensuring that the protections in that legislation focused on the most critical fish and fish habitat in navigable waters. At the same time, we wanted to take some of that regulatory burden off some of the waterways that probably never had fish habitat and would never have fish habitat, but were still under the same regime and regulatory layers of bureaucracy that any river, stream, ocean, or lake would come under, when we were just talking about drainage ditches and irrigation canals, for example.

When we talk about some of the changes that were made, I think we need to highlight that the act maintained a very strong regulatory regime and protected very important fish habitat, but it had more of a practical scope. It reduced that administrative burden on not only municipalities, but also the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. It had now freed up a lot of its time and resources to focus on the most important cases and waterways without having to deal with very minor projects for municipalities. However, it also empowered municipalities to be the environmental stewards of their own waterways. When it comes to those types of projects and waterways, who would be better to be the stewards of those lands than the municipalities, the councils, and their staff, who are on the ground each and every day? They know the history. They have that local knowledge. They know whether it is fish habitat. They know if it is a seasonal waterway. Certainly, they know that better than a bureaucrat in Ottawa. Therefore, I think it was a win-win situation for the municipalities, as well as the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Now we are faced with these changes in Bill C-68, which would expand the definition of fish habitat, expanding it even wider and more broad than it was prior to 2012. That is very disconcerting in the fact that it was burdensome and difficult to deal with and almost impossible to enforce prior to 2012. How difficult will this be when not only we restore it to the previous definition, but have even expanded that definition to a much wider scope. It has re-engaged a lot of those same regulations, but it also introduces something that is new, which is designated projects. This will include any projects within a category that could impact any waterway, whether it has a specific impact on a known fish habitat or not.

What is even more concerning for our stakeholders, municipalities, farmers, and ranchers is the fact that there is no definition on what a designated project is. This is really a larger narrative that we have seen from the Liberal government. It rushed through this legislation without doing all the homework and all the background work first so that it tabled a complete document that everyone could understand exactly where they stood. The legislation is very clear. The rules and regulations are very clear. There are still some very large holes in it with which stakeholders are very concerned.

The other issue, which is a large narrative with some of the Liberal legislation we have seen, is the minister would have more expanded and broader powers. This is very similar to what we have seen with Bill C-69.

We now have proponents in the energy sector that are divesting themselves of the energy sector because they do not feel there is a clear path to success. If they do apply for a project, whether it is pipeline, a mine, a forestry initiative, LNG, they could go through the regulatory process, through every environmental review, could pass all of those things, but at several steps during the process, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change would have the authority to step in and tell them to go back to the beginning. The minister could cut it off right there and tell them the project was not in the public interest or it was not something that could be supported. That would be the end of that project.

There is no clear definition of how to reach success or if there is a definitive pathway that people would know their projects would not succeed. We cannot have those types of projects at the whim of one person. That is very similar to what we see in Bill C-68 where the minister would have similar powers.

This is a crippling burden for municipalities that do not have the resources or the infrastructure to deal with these things. Imagine the burden and the impact it will have on farmers and ranchers who absolutely do not have the wherewithal to handle some of these issues.

Prior to 2012, a farmer in northern Alberta explained to me that he had a spring run-off area that went through his field. He would put a couple of 2x4s down during the spring so he could drive his machinery over it when he sprayed or seeded. However, Fisheries and Oceans came to him before 2012 and said that it was a waterway because it could float a canoe or a kayak. Certainly it could for about two weeks in the spring, but the rest of the time it was dry. He had to build a bridge over that seasonal spring runoff area. We are not talking about a river for the last pirate of Saskatchewan to float down the plain. This was simply a spring run-off. He was very concerned that he would have to go back to this. This will very burdensome to him.

Again, this goes back to the narrative that the Liberal government implements knee-jerk legislation, without doing the due diligence, without having an idea of what the ramifications will be and the unintended consequences, or doing the economic impact analysis of these decisions and what they will have on other sectors.

This is again another attack on rural Canadians. It is not science-based, front of package labelling, food guide, carbon tax. These changes will impact our rural communities, farmers, and ranchers who are struggling just to stay in business. Now there is a potential trade war with the United States.

For farmers and ranchers in rural municipalities, their livelihoods depend on healthy waterways, lakes, rivers, streams, aquifers. No one would take better care of these waterways than those who are on the ground, rural Canadians, farmers, and ranchers.

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

Mr. Speaker, we have heard referenced a number of times in this place that municipalities across Canada were upset with the Fisheries Act, and that is why the Harper government acted to change it.

I just want to reference this again. I mentioned it earlier in debate. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities dealt with this issue in 2012. They brought before the Federation of Canadian Municipalities' annual general meeting a motion to urge former prime minister Harper to protect habitat and to take those sections out of Bill C-38 that weakened habitat protections. The motion was brought forward by a British Columbian, and former Conservative minister of fisheries, the hon. Tom Siddon, who happened to be an elected official within his own area of British Columbia. It was brought to the floor of the FCM, where it passed.

Where municipalities have weighed in on this issue, they have called for the protection of fish habitat. There is no question that there can be times when there are conflicts for some rural municipalities, but those issues have been largely dealt with in Bill C-68. It certainly has the support of municipalities across the country.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to speak tonight to Bill C-68, an act to amend the Fisheries Act and other acts in consequence, and there are some consequences.

In the 2015 election campaign, the Liberals promised to strengthen the role of parliamentary committees. The Prime Minister promised Canadians that committees would be independent, giving them the ability to better scrutinize legislation and “provide reliable, non-partisan research” through their reporting to Parliament. Two years after the election, the same Liberals introduced Bill C-68, legislation that would bring in a number of changes to the Fisheries Act without considering a single expert's advice from stakeholders or the committee study of the bill.

The proposed changes ignore some of the major findings from a report of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans that was presented to the House in February 2017. On September 19, 2016, the fisheries committee agreed to the following motion, which stated:

...review and study the scope of application of the Fisheries Act, and specifically the serious harm to fish prohibition; how the prohibition is implemented to protect fish and fish habitat; the capacity of Fisheries and Oceans Canada to deliver on fish and fish habitat protection through project review, monitoring, and enforcement; the definitions of serious harm to fish and commercial, recreational, and Aboriginal fisheries; the use of regulatory authorities under the Fisheries Act; and other related provisions of the act, and provide its recommendations in a report to the House....

The committee convened 10 meetings in Ottawa from October 31 to December 12, 2016, before presenting the report to the House of Commons in February 2017. Overall, the committee heard testimony from 50 different witnesses during the study and received over 188 submitted briefing notes. It was a comprehensive and fact-based study with experts from almost every province putting forward policy suggestions. If the government were truly committed to strengthening the role of parliamentary committees, this study should have formed the basis for Bill C-68 with all of that consultation.

The Liberals essentially ignored the committee's report, including one of its most important recommendations, which stated:

Any revision of the Fisheries Act should review and refine the previous definition of HADD [the harmful alteration, disruption or destruction of fish habitat] due to the previous definition’s vulnerability to being applied in an inconsistent manner and the limiting effect it had on government agencies in their management of fisheries and habitats in the interest of fish productivity.

Following hours of testimony from the 50 witnesses and briefing notes from more than 180 associations, groups, and individuals, it was agreed that a return to HADD was not ideal, and that, should the government return to HADD, it would need to be refined and reviewed. Bill C-68 ignores this recommendation and introduces a return to HADD.

HADD is referred to in proposed subsection 35(1) of the legislation, which states, “No person shall carry on any work, undertaking or activity that results in the harmful alteration, disruption or destruction of fish habitat.” Essentially, this means that any sort of development that could be harmful to, alter, disrupt, or destroy any fish habitat could be stopped or not approved by the government, taking us back to one of the major issues we have seen, especially with municipalities and the concerns they had when they tried to make any type of alterations. They would have to go to DFO and the provincial governments to make sure they were satisfying conditions that they knew, on the ground, were not necessary. It added costs.

I had the opportunity earlier to question the member for Cape Breton—Canso about the concerns municipalities had. He indicated that they are getting so much money that they really do not care whether or not that is the case. Of course, I think they would question just how quickly that money is coming out, but the concerns they have are still there. Going back to a system that does not respect the rights of communities and municipalities, and the concerns about agriculture and different groups that some members discussed earlier, it is no wonder we are having trouble getting different types of projects off the ground. This is a major concern, and hopefully I will have a chance to discuss that later.

As the committee report noted, this section was applied inconsistently and it was unclear. The concern is always that developers are often bogged down in these battles over the vague guidelines. For example, there was no clearly defined outline of what constituted a fish habitat, or what was seen to be harmful, in the previous version of the act. There was no clear path forward, and HADD became an obstacle to development, growth, and investment within the industry. It was becoming a consistent roadblock for projects and growth.

We need to listen to expert advice, instead of politically motivated advice. In the debate over the bill's provisions, stakeholders have been flagging this proposed change as problematic. The reinstatement of these measures will result in greater uncertainties for existing and new facilities, and undue delay. This can very well discourage investment at a time when Canadians and Canadian businesses need it the most. The key component here is certainly.

A few months ago, I had an opportunity to be with the trade committee in southeast Asia, and in some of the discussions we had with fund managers, we wondered how we could, in good conscience, tell people to come to Canada and invest. That is shameful when we think of the tens of billions in project dollars that have already left, and the fact that people are starting to say that Canada is not a place for an investment dollar. It is not as though an oil and gas project is not going to be developed. Otherwise, it will be developed, but it will be developed somewhere else in competition with us. For those who suggest that this is going to help with greenhouse gases and so on, this just changes it from an opportunity for us to use our natural resources, to some other place taking advantage of that.

Certainly, the same situation has occurred with the Kinder Morgan discussion, in which the government used $4.5 billion to purchase a 65-year-old pipeline, and gave that company the opportunity to go someplace else to build pipelines to bring someone else's product into eastern Canada. How is that ever going to change anything?

That is the major concern I have, and people see this as one of the major issues with government overreach, which is certainly the case here.

Let me be clear: Conservatives wholeheartedly support the protection of our oceans and fisheries. Our previous changes to the act brought a fine balance between encouraging growth in the industry and responsible conservation. Our previous changes to the act also enacted provisions that provided transparency in the decision-making process, and provided a level of certainty to those invested in the act. Unlike the Liberals, Conservatives listen to the people on the ground, instead of importing ideas and policies from Liberal insiders, foreign interest groups, and radical eco-activists. As Conservatives, we take our cues from Canadians, and we understand the importance of finding the right balance.

It was for this specific reason that in 2012, our former Conservative government removed HADD and replaced it with the following:

35 (1) No person shall carry on any work, undertaking or activity that results in serious harm to fish that are part of a commercial, recreational or Aboriginal fishery, or to fish that support such a fishery.

This definition was much clearer, and was more universally accepted because it struck the important balance required between development and conservation.

There are also changes within this bill that would undermine transparency and due process by allowing the ministers to withhold critical information from interested proponents. How is that transparent?

Another change I am worried about is the fact that the bill would allow the minister to establish an advisory panel with taxpayer-funded members and panellists, but does not set the guidelines or limitations for its use. Without any guidelines, these panels may be subject to abuse, especially if they are established by politically motivated individuals.

On behalf of the many Canadians and industry experts against the new changes, I join my Conservative colleagues in urging the Liberal government to listen to expert advice and reverse this senseless change, revisit the return of HADD, and amend the legislation to ensure that economic development and environmental protection go hand in hand and not head to head.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Mr. Speaker, in those nine years from 2006 to 2015, when we were in government, there was consultation. There were these changes, and there was a coast to coast tour on salmon. We started on the west coast and ended on the east coast. There is a problem with salmon. It has not developed over one year. It has been over many years. The previous Conservative Parliament was committed to trying to find those answers. Those answers are not only one issue. It is the whole issue of how we are protecting the environment and enhancing the environment.

Unfortunately, Bill C-68 will not solve that problem through rhetoric, because it is not science-based. I believe everyone on this side is committed to doing whatever is necessary to enhance the environment for the salmon, but it is a problem that may take many years of commitment from all sides to find the solutions.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to speak to Bill C-68.

I will begin by thanking the member for Prince Albert for the important points he made to this debate. I find it disappointing that science is being ignored, and the member for Prince Albert reminded us of the importance of respecting science. Rhetoric and false statements being made in the House to make a point really discredits that party, that individual, when they make false statements.

Regarding Kinder Morgan, the member for Prince Albert reminded us that the decisions need to be based on science and not on protesting, making outrageous statements, and carrying out illegal activities. As members of Parliament in Canada, we have to look at what is good for the country. What do we need to do? The Liberal government decided that energy east was a no-go. It ignored the science and made a political decision that energy east was a no-go, that Ontario and Quebec, the eastern part of this country, will have to continue to import oil from the Middle East. It will have to be tanked up the east coast and brought into Canada from a foreign entity.

Canada could be self-sufficient if we had energy east. We could ship our oil out of Canada if we had the infrastructure. Right now what we are hearing from the science base is that we move our oil and gas. We leave it in the ground, which means we destroy the standard of living that Canadians enjoy, or we move it by tanker or train, but we are not going to move it the safest way, which is with pipelines. It is bizarre. It is unscientific. It makes no sense when I talk to Canadians. Again, the member Prince Albert reminded us of the importance of respecting science.

I want to give a little history lesson on how we ended up dealing with Bill C-68.

I will go back to the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, CEPA. It is a piece of legislation that a lot of regulations for environmental protection was based on. It passed in 1999, the prime minister was Jean Chrétien, and it came into force in 2000. CEPA needed to be reviewed every five years, which is very common with legislation. It came into effect in 2000, and the five-year review would have been in 2005.

Who was the prime minister in 2005? That was Paul Martin. Jean Chrétien's government went from 1993 to December 2003, and in 2003, Paul Martin took over. There was an election in 2004. I was elected in 2004.

I have served my community for 14 years in local government on city council. However, we had trouble even cleaning and maintaining the ditching system so that we would not have flooding, as that was constantly restricted. We heard from not only the local government that I served on but from farmers, and right across the country. Things were not working. Therefore, I was quite excited when I was elected in 2004 and expressed a strong interest in making sure that on the problems we had in the country we could always do better. We can learn from what is not working. Local governments and farmers need to be able to maintain proper drainage systems; otherwise, they plug up. That was very important.

I was really excited in 2006 when there was another election and Paul Martin was no longer the prime minister. Stephen Harper became the prime minister in 2006. I was honoured to be asked to be the parliamentary secretary to the minister of the environment. One of the first things we did was realize that the legislative requirement to deal with CEPA should have been done no later than 2005. It was now 2006.

The past Conservative government kept its promises. It did what was required for good governance. It served Canadians extremely well. The Canadian Environmental Protection Act review was overdue. We began with that and we spent a couple of years of consultation, hearing from Canadians about what needed to be changed. We heard that over and over again. That consultation included experts, scientists, and indigenous peoples. We did not rush it. We got it right. From that we made a lot of changes.

In the discussion that we have heard here, not science-based but rhetoric, where we have the NDP saying that the changes that were made hurt salmon. That is not true. We have heard from the Liberals that the previous government gutted protections without consultation. That is not true. Hansard will support that there were years of consultation to get it right. That is not what we see from the Liberal government where they ram things through using time allocation: “We have heard enough. We have heard from the witnesses who we chose and we wanted to hear from, so now that we have heard what we wanted to hear, we want to move this through.” That is not in the interests of Canada, and it not science-based.

The Liberals have said that they want to restore the lost habitat protection. However, that is not what happened. There were improvements so that the drainage systems across the country could be maintained. People were not being fined. We were being realistic. Yes, we do need to protect our waters. We need to do that.

Those are the changes that were made by the previous government. Now what we have in Bill C-68 is again the rhetoric or statements that are not based on science. The end result will be layers of regulatory uncertainty.

There were over 50 witnesses that came to the committee. Not one of the witnesses could identify any harm that had been done by the previous government. Actually, the committee heard about the good that had happened. There was not one witness who could show by science any support for Bill C-68 and the need for any of the amendments and changes in Bill C-68.

There were over 50 witnesses. One of the witnesses came from the Canadian Electricity Association. With the changes of CEPA, which I spoke of a moment ago, we heard from electricity producers. They said that one of their challenges is that if they put fish into the streams and restock the streams, the habitats change. They want to improve the habitat to make it better and healthier. However, if they hurt any fish by having all of these new fish introduced into the streams and lakes, they will be held responsible for an existing structure. They said if we could provide freedom for them to make those changes, they wanted to do that. It is good for the environment, just like farmers wanting to make things better, so as long as they were not going to be hurt by doing that, they would like to be able to make those changes. That was one of the changes that was made.

Now what the Liberals are saying will restore lost habitats actually will have the opposite effect. That is what the Canadian Electricity Association said, that Bill C-68 represents one step forward but two steps back. Bill C-68 is a missed opportunity for the federal government to anchor the Fisheries Act in a reasonable population-based approach, rather than focused on individual fish, and to clearly identify fisheries management objectives.

What is being proposed creates uncertainty. It puts farmers at risk and it puts infrastructure at risk. What it does, though, is that it keeps a political promise made by the government. That is why we are not hearing science-based information. Rather, we are hearing rhetoric. It is really sad.

It was in 2005, just before there was a change in government, there was a report from the commissioner of the environment. It stated, “When it comes to protecting the environment, bold announcements are made and then often forgotten as soon as the confetti hits the ground”. That is happening again, and that is not in the interests of Canada.

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

Mr. Speaker, although we are debating Bill C-68, I cannot leave the comments the member for Prince Albert just made unchallenged. I participated as an intervenor in the review of Kinder Morgan before the National Energy Board. There were two pieces of evidence. One was from Kinder Morgan that completing the expansion would create 90 new permanent jobs, 40 in Alberta and 50 in British Columbia, and that during construction, it would create 2,500 jobs a year for two years.

The other evidence about jobs came from the largest union representing oil sands workers in Alberta, Unifor. Its evidence was that completing the Kinder Morgan pipeline expansion would threaten Canadian jobs and cause a loss of jobs, with a direct threat to the remaining refinery in Burnaby, and losing, through opportunity costs, the jobs that could be created by having the product refined in Canada. Unfortunately, the National Energy Board ruled that jobs were not inside its mandate. It did not want to hear anything about jobs, and refused to hear the evidence from Unifor.

In fact, there is not a single study anywhere, despite all the rhetoric and propaganda, that tells us Kinder Morgan would be a long-term job creator in Canada. Again, the evidence the NEB refused to hear from the largest union involved was that it was a threat to jobs.

[Randy Hoback, Conservative, Prince Albert, SK]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague across the hall in the Liberal Party just asked a question about why people from the Prairies were standing up to speak to this act. I guess he did not realize oceans and fisheries is on the Prairies and has an impact on a lot of our municipalities in how they go about conducting their business on a day-to-day basis. The Conservative Party of Canada supports protecting our lakes and rivers and the oceans and the fisheries. There is no question about that. Let us get that on the record right now: We support that and we are behind it 100%.

I love to fish. We have many colleagues who are in our hunting and angling caucus who love to fish. We do a lot of catch-and-release, we use barbless hooks, we take responsibility, and we take the appropriate measures when we are fishing to make sure that a fish, when it is caught, is returned alive and safe and there for somebody else to enjoy in the future. Northern Saskatchewan is a beautiful province to fish in. I know the member for Regina—Wascana has been here all night, and he would agree with me. When we go up into northern Saskatchewan, we see the development and the fisheries there and we see the people and the beautiful landscape and it is a great place to go fishing. I encourage all members to come to northern Saskatchewan and do some fishing with barbless hooks and catch-and-release because that is very important.

Back to the business of today, what the Liberals have done in Bill C-68 is add an additional layer of bureaucracy, and that is very concerning. In 2010 and 2011, we had SARM, the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities, coming into our offices, saying, “We need help. We are trying to build a culvert in a dry creek bed, and we cannot get approval from oceans and fisheries”. I remember Bud Strube from the RM of Shellbrook came into my office and said, “We have a bed here that we have to change the culvert in because the beavers have dammed it.” Because they dammed it up it didn't flow last spring, it took out the road, and did harm to the actual stream that the fish would go up and down during the spring season. Therefore, during spring runoff there is water in that culvert. By the time the middle of June hits, there is nothing in that culvert. They change it in July and August when there is nothing in the culvert and then it is there, ready for the next spring. However, they would apply to oceans and fisheries for the appropriate permits and it would sit on somebody's desk. It would be sitting there and it would be July, it would be August, September. November was coming so they were phoning to say they needed to get this done, freeze-up was happening. There would be no response. Finally when they got a response, it was already frozen up. They would go and change the culvert because they had to do it. They had to make sure the culvert was in place for the next spring's runoff. They would spend twice as much money. They are inefficient in how they do it. They cannot do as clean and nice a job in November as they could in July or August, but that is the result of having that type of bureaucracy on the Prairies.

The reality is we can have proper management of the waterways without the bureaucracy. The bureaucracy in this case is an example of where it has gotten in the way. When the government adds a bureaucracy, the first thing it does is try to justify why it should exist. What do the officials do? They start bringing in all sorts of crazy rules and regulations that they interpret on their own to make it tougher to do things. I will go back to my rural municipality example. I had a rural municipality just outside of Arborfield. It had some flooding and the people had to change some culverts. It was no problem, as it was pretty straightforward. Therefore, they thought they should do some mitigation the next year. Again, they were going to go in and put some different culverts in. The rules said they had to put in all these different types of mechanisms in case there should be rain. They spent two to three days putting in these mechanisms in case it should rain, to manage erosion and all that, where it would have only taken them two hours to change the culvert. Who pays for that? I pay for that. The taxpayer pays for that. Every person in that municipality paid for that expense. Where was the common sense? It was not with the bureaucracy.

That is where I get really concerned when I listen to members on the opposite side say, “Farmers are going to be protected here. We know that. We have not seen the regulations. We do not know what the regulations are going to say, but do not worry, it will all be fine.” We have heard that before and we are not going to buy it again. This has a lot of concerns.

One other concern I have is about the transparency of the minister and his role in the decision-making process. When we make a decision, we base it on science; everybody in this House would agree with that. In this scenario, and the Liberals have done this in other areas, they have based it on the minister's interpretation of what he wants to achieve. That is not bankability, that is not predictability, and that is not even logical in a lot of cases. If they have science saying that this is the way something should be done, then that is the way it should be done. I want them to give me a good reason why they would not do that. What scares me even more is the minister does not have to reveal the science. He does not even have to justify his decision to the taxpayer. He can just do it. How does that make sense?

It does not make sense. Why would they put themselves in this scenario? In fact, in this type of scenario with good governance, it would never pass the smell test. It does not work.

If the government is basically telling people who are going to take on a project here are the rules, check all the boxes, and do everything by the rules, but the minister can come in at the end of the day and say, “You did not smile nicely; you didn't wear a nice enough tie. I am not going to approve your project.” That can actually happen, and that is wrong. That should never be the purview of any minister in a Canadian government. That creates a lot of concern.

The Liberals talk about establishing advisory panels. Again, there is no context around what this panel would do, who it would be made up of, what it would consist of, or what the end goal at the end of the day is for that panel. However, some more Liberal members can be appointed to a panel, they would get their per diems, and life would be great. There would be another panel that would make some recommendations, and like I said about bureaucracy, the Liberals love to make rules to give themselves something to do.

What do we think this panel is going to do? I think panels are important. I think consultation is very important. I think it is important that government actually talks to the people who are affected, but when separate panels are created that do not have a vested interest in the project, what is the end game? Why are they there? That is very concerning.

We will work closely with fishermen and farmers. We will do what it takes to make sure that we have a proper fisheries going into the future. We will make sure that our kids and grandkids actually have a place to go fishing, that they will have a sector to work in, and that it will be profitable and bankable. After all, Conservatives know that the environment and the economy go hand in hand. The Liberals should actually take their own advice in that regard. We have to have balance. We have to mitigate the balance. We have to understand that there will be sacrifices once in a while in order to achieve what is better for everybody involved.

That is just the reality. That is part of the decision-making process. I think I will close right there, and open it up for questions. However, I am very concerned with what we are seeing here. We are seeing a reversal of things, and it will not make things better for Canadians. It will make it worse. It will not make us more competitive as a country or a better country; it will make us weaker. It actually will not create a future for our families, our kids, and our grandkids and their kids. It will make it harder. Why would we do this? It just does not make sense, unless there is a Liberal goal at the end of the day.

Again, we stand with our fishermen. We stand with the people in the sector. We will always stand up for them to make sure there is common sense when it comes to doing things in the fisheries.

[Andy Fillmore, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Democratic Institutions]

Mr. Speaker, I must say it is wonderful at long last to finally hear from a member on the opposition benches in a riding that actually touches the ocean.

As the MP for Halifax, which includes the great fishing community of Sambro, people in Atlantic Canada remember the reckless changes that the Harper Conservatives made to the Fisheries Act during their time in office. We remember the 430-page Conservative omnibus bill, which in 2012 gutted the protection of Canada's fish and fish habitat without consulting indigenous peoples, fishers, scientists, conservation advocates, or coastal communities in any meaningful way whatsoever. Bill C-68 would once again restore those protections that the Conservatives threw aside.

I am glad to hear organizations such as the World Wildlife Fund of Canada, Ecojustice, the David Suzuki Foundation, the Ecology Action Centre speak out in favour of the measures contained in this legislation.

Would the hon. member not agree that Canada needs a strong regulatory authority to protect our fish and fish habitat, as contained in Bill C-68?

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Madam Speaker, it is an honour to rise to speak on Bill C-68, an act to amend the Fisheries Act and other acts in consequence. As members can imagine, as a coastal British Columbian, I understand the importance and significance of protecting our fish. Where I live, it is not just our food security, our economy, or our culture, but it is integral to everything and is what connects us. It is even in our language. As saltwater people, fish and the protection of fish is given utmost priority. We always say that the health of our fish and our salmon is a reflection of the health of our communities. The importance and significance of this bill would restore the act that needs to be put in place as soon as possible so that we can protect our fish and bring ourselves back to abundance.

One of the key changes made to the Fisheries Act in 2012 that removed protection for fish and fish habitat, and that will be restored, is the harmful alteration and disruption or destruction of fish habitat. It goes further by restoring the definition of fisheries to include all fish. However, it still does not address the conflict mandates, which Commissioner Cohen identified, of conserving wild salmon while protecting harmful salmon practices. This was in the mandate letter to the Ministry of Fisheries and Oceans and the Canadian Coast Guard. The Prime Minister himself instructed the minister to act on the recommendations of the Cohen commission on restoring sockeye salmon stocks in the Fraser River.

In recommendation 3 of his report, Justice Cohen recommended, “The Government of Canada should remove from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ mandate the promotion of salmon farming as an industry and farmed salmon as a product.” DFO is still continuing to promote salmon farming, its industry, and the product. We are concerned that the government has not followed through with this promise. It is impossible for the government to be an agent and also promoting an industry that might have detrimental impacts and effects on our wild fish. The goal and mandate of DFO should be restored to that of just protecting wild salmon and wild fish. New Democrats would like the government to follow through with the promise it made in the 2015 election campaign and that was outlined in the Cohen commission.

It has not done that, and it is something that is raised repeatedly. In fact, the Pacific Salmon Foundation just came out against open net salmon farming. Many groups in my riding are raising concerns about the impact it is having. Many indigenous communities in my riding are raising concerns around the impact of salmon farming. We would like that to be split out so that we can make sure DFO is doing its historic job of advocating for and protecting our fish. That is not happening now, and it is not in this legislation.

It is the first time that rebuilding of depleted fish stocks has been included in the Fisheries Act. However, details on rebuilding this will be in regulations. Those regulations need to be strong, with timelines and targets, and it needs to take into account the impacts of climate change and species interactions. We know in my area that climate change is real. In 2014, it was so dry—and then rained just in time, in August—that we were worried we would lose all of our fish as the streams ran dry at the time when the fish needed to spawn upstream. It is important that is integrated in the legislation, but also setting clear targets and necessary investments. The government keeps talking about its oceans protection plan and its record investments in coastal restoration, but in fact we are not seeing that on the ground.

As I said earlier, the Somass River still has no coastal restoration funds. It is expecting about 350,000 pieces of sockeye salmon this year, which is well below the average of just over a million and the high of 1.9 million. How do we get back to abundance? We need to make adequate investments, and we are not doing that. The salmon industry in British Columbia brings in well over $1 billion, yet we do not even invest $50 million in that sector. As a former business person, I know that is far from adequate in terms of investment in an industry that is so critical to British Columbians, in tourism, the commercial sector of fishing, the recreation sector, and for food security.

It feeds many people, especially indigenous people who rely on that fish, people living in poverty. It is important that the government backs it up with real investment. The bill states the following:

require that, when making a decision under that Act, the Minister shall consider any adverse effects that the decision may have on the rights of the Indigenous peoples of Canada recognized and affirmed by section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, include provisions respecting the consideration and protection of Indigenous knowledge of the Indigenous peoples of Canada, and authorize the making of agreements with Indigenous governing bodies to further the purpose of the Fisheries Act;

It is concerning that it is still far from free, prior, and informed consent, a specific right that pertains to indigenous peoples and is recognized in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

I am going to quote from the Nuu-chah-nulth's Ha'wiih, who are the hereditary chiefs of the 14 Nuu-chah-nulth first nations on the west coast of Vancouver Island. They have identified five concerns, and one is the purpose of the Fisheries Act, which must include reconciliation with aboriginal people. They said there is no reference to aboriginal people or unique and important ties to the fishery.

The Prime Minister has said that the “failure of successive Canadian governments to respect the rights of Indigenous Peoples in Canada is our great shame. And for many Indigenous Peoples, this lack of respect for their rights persists to this day.”

Second, there is another quote from the Prime Minister: “We now have before us an opportunity to deliver true, meaningful and lasting reconciliation between Canada and first nations, the Métis Nation, and Inuit peoples.

Lastly, he has stated before that, “We are all in this together, and the relationships we build need to reflect this reality. In Canada, this means new relationships between the government of Canada and Indigenous Peoples – relationships based on the recognition of rights, respect, co-operation and partnership.”

They would like to see this mean true, meaningful, and lasting reconciliation that includes reconciliation with aboriginal people in the purpose section of this legislation, and say, “We do not submit that Reconciliation is achieved by the Fisheries Act alone; rather, we submit that the Fisheries Act can assist in achieving Reconciliation.”

They would like to see incorporating respect for indigenous law. They say, “We respectfully advise that section 2.5 should be amended by adding the following: the traditional and contemporary laws of the Indigenous peoples of Canada, as provided to the Minister.”

Third, they are concerned about controlling ministerial discretion. They say “that the minister 'may' consider certain named issues when making a decision.” They recommend that the word “may” in section 2.5 be changed to the word “shall”. They say that, “We remain to be convinced that the government of Canada will always be a government that shares the need to preserve the environment, conserve and manage fish species conservatively, and respect the rights, laws, and traditions of Indigenous people.”

Fourth, they would like to see consistency of the reference to aboriginal peoples.

Fifth, with regard to restoring fish habitat, they say, “While we approve of the protections being given to the Fisheries habitat, we cannot concede that enough is being done to restore the habitat and repair the damage done by industry, over-fishing, or mismanagement. We therefore recommend that the purpose of the Act be amended further by adding the following: 2.1(c) the restoration of damage for compromised fisheries and fish habitat”.

They would like to see that in there. They say the time is now for the federal government to take the lead in habitat restoration. This legislation provides the perfect vehicle to do so.

Last, the bill gives a great deal of discretion around decision-making to the minister, allowing decisions to be made based on the minister's opinion rather than on scientific evidence.

In closing, we support the bill. We support restoring fish habitat. We would like to see some of these concerns addressed. These are concerns that are shared widely in my riding of Courtenay—Alberni, that are shared by many of the groups that are doing the hard work, many of the groups that are advocating for our salmon in particular, and our fish.

Many of the salmon enhancement groups have identified that they have not seen an increase in 28 years in many of the hatcheries.

This has been a failure of repeated governments. Hopefully the government will put forward a real plan so we can bring back our fish stock to abundancy.

[Cathay Wagantall, Conservative, Yorkton—Melville, SK]

Madam Speaker, it is a privilege for me to stand this evening to speak to the bill.

I will take a bit of a different approach because I am from Saskatchewan. As has been mentioned, our lakes are beautiful. We have wonderful fish and all kinds of animal life. It is very pristine and beautiful. We are also a major agricultural source within the country, as well as natural resources.

The Conservative Party of Canada supports the protection of our oceans and fisheries. Our previous changes to the Fisheries Act were enacted to support transparency in the decision-making process and to provide a level of certainty to those who had an investment in this. It is important to note that we were very robust in our expectations in determining whether environmental conditions were being met. However, we worked with the natural resource and the agricultural communities.

The term “the environment and the economy go hand in hand” does not belong to the current government. Back in 2009, that is the exact term I used to express Conservative values when I was running in for nomination. There is no question that on this side of the floor, the environment and the economy are both important, which is why our prime minister understood that Canada's role on this issue had to include a global look at the world. Canada has a responsibility in relation to the rest of the world, not just for the environment but for our economy as well. That is where our ability to work with the environment exists. Some people cannot afford to make a living. More and more we find ourselves in a situation, where investment is running out of the country as fast as it can. We are losing jobs. We cannot compete with the United States. We cannot afford to do a lot of the things that we want to do as a country to ensure our economy is strong while at the same time our environment is strong.

When I was a brand new member of Parliament two and a half years ago, one of the first visits to my office was a young man from an environmental engineers group. I could not say exactly which group it was as I was in a bit of a daze. However, we had an amazing conversation. He said, knowing what was coming from the the government and the likelihood of changes to this very act, that what we had was very good. It was very robust, very challenging, there were huge expectations, and it provided a level of certainty.

We kept hearing how the government just rushed these things through. I did not appreciate what he said to me at the time, but I do now. Certainty enabled resource producers to know the parameters under which they would be working. They hired environmental engineers like himself to ensure they did absolutely everything they could to be prepared to be to meet the requirements for their new projects. His perspective was that certainty made all the difference in the environment and the economy being able to go hand in hand.

That is the case in my riding where we have potash development at this very moment. There is a circumstance there where habitat would be be influenced by the productivity. I have a news flash. It does not matter what we do, whether it is build a house, build a downtown store, put in a new farm building, or whatever, we impact our environment. However, the concept of offsets, which the Saskatchewan Mining Association referred to in its brief, is very important.

It said that it had worked previously with Fisheries and Oceans Canada on the topic of habitat banking, resulting in the 2012 publication “Fish Habitat Banking in Canada: Opportunities and Challenges”. As such, it said that it supported the addition of proponent-led habitat banking into the amended act. Why? The current government would say that it is because it is this evil group that wants to destroy our environment, which is ridiculous. The truth of the matter is that it wants to be responsible. I know it spent millions of dollars in securing other land as the habitat that would be protected to ensure that its business could grow and people all across our province and our country could be employed. We need that balance. I do not see that balance at all with the government.

With Bill C-68, the Liberals have added additional layers of regulatory uncertainty.

We have heard a lot tonight about the impacts on the farmers and how that will deter them in a lot of ways. My fellow member, I believe the member for Foothills, spoke to this issue a while back. He talked about how fish would be found because of floodwaters or whatever and all of a sudden these drainage areas would have to be made into bedding areas for fish, and how difficult that would be for the farming community. The member across the floor, I believe it was a member from Prince Edward Island, said that he was sure that would be dealt with at committee, that it was common sense. That is not what I am hearing from the government at all. The member from across the floor said that it was common sense to enable the Prairies and places where this was overreach to be considered in the bill. Apparently, that will not be the case.

The Liberals have said that they are restoring the harmful alteration, disruption or destruction of fish habitat prohibition, yet they have sidestepped any obligation to uphold the HADD regulations in the legislation by providing the minister with the ability to exempt certain provisions. How will they decide which ones they will exempt and which ones they will not? That is a dangerous place to be. We know Canadians look at what is done in the House and know what politics do. We have already heard tonight about the circumstances where this is being abused. I even wonder about the water systems that will be put in our first nations, which are under water advisories. This is a really good thing. It needs to be done. I have small communities all over my riding that need that as well. What kind of advanced research was done on the implications of putting those systems in? We need to have fairness across the board.

I want to mention one more thing. We are having trouble getting this pipeline built, yet today there was an announcement that stated, “Voisey's Bay Underground Mine Construction To Begin This Summer”. This is in Labrador. Obviously, it is a priority to make that happen. It states:

Three former Liberal premiers were on hand for the official announcement this morning...[and the] agreement was signed.

The project is expected to result in 1,700 jobs...$69-million in tax revenue for the province.

It is an ore mine. However, somehow we cannot get this pipeline built to the coast to enable our provinces, which have wonderful resources, to make a difference in the Canadian economy, and to do it in an environmentally-friendly way. I am very proud of my province. We have a lot to show and teach the government about good environmental standards.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Madam Speaker, this is a very interesting discussion and there have been some good speeches this evening.

I will start by saying there are two pieces of federal legislation aimed at protecting the quality of Canada's fresh water. These laws implement Ottawa's clearly stated constitutional jurisdiction and responsibility in two specific areas: navigation and the fishery. I am speaking of the Navigation Protection Act, formerly the Navigable Waters Protection Act and soon to be renamed the Canadian navigable waters act by virtue of Bill C-69, which passed at report stage today and is on its way to passing at third reading. The second piece of legislation, of course, is the Fisheries Act. These two laws are really the basis of federal water policy. Often water policy comes more out of provincial jurisdiction, but the federal government has something to say about water policy, and it is through those two main pieces of legislation.

Navigation and fishing were key aspects of life at the time of Confederation and remain significant today in our diversified modern economy. This is no doubt the reason that jurisdiction for both navigation and the fishery were given to the central government, this plus the fact that, as Pierre Trudeau famously said, “Fish swim,” which means they cross provincial boundaries, as do marine vessels for that matter.

Based on the speeches I have heard here and on what I know to be the Conservative narrative, it is fair to say the Conservative opposition does not see these two laws broadly as environmental laws. This is despite the fact that both laws govern and protect the aquatic environments on which vessels traverse and in which fish live. The Navigation Protection Act and the Fisheries Act are part of a grouping of four federal laws that are the basis of federal environmental policy in Canada, a grouping that includes the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, which is being renamed the impact assessment act under Bill C-69, and the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, which has just gone through its five-year legislative review at the environment committee under the very able stewardship of the member for King—Vaughan.

It was the Navigable Waters Protection Act and the Fisheries Act that the Harper government targeted for revamping in order to restrict their scope and significance for the environment. The Harper government amended the Navigable Waters Protection Act twice, including at one point changing its name to the Navigation Protection Act. The first time it restricted the act's scope was in a 2009 omnibus budget bill, and the second time in a 2012 omnibus budget bill.

I know members find it hard to believe that the Conservative government would ever do that, but yes it did use omnibus budget bills and they were not necessarily encompassing only financial matters. The 2012 omnibus budget bill by the Conservative government removed broad Fisheries Act protections for all fish habitats, stipulating that the act would from then on only prohibit “serious harm to fish that are part of a commercial, recreational or Aboriginal fishery, or that support such a fishery”.

Incidentally, Prime Minister Harper and the Conservative government used the 2009 omnibus budget bill, if I am not mistaken, to also weaken the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, which is why the government had to bring in Bill C-69 to strengthen environmental assessment in Canada and to regain the trust of Canadians regarding the federal government's commitment to protecting the environment.

I know the Conservatives are unhappy with government budget bills when they have too many pages, and call them omnibus bills, but there is no comparison—Madam Speaker, you will recall, you were in the House—to the blatant manner in which the previous government stretched the meaning of budget bill to effectively cover everything from banks to canoes and sailboats to trout, shellfish, and crustaceans. That is what the Liberal platform objected to: the Harper government's semantic elasticity with regard to the notion of a budget bill.

Bill C-68 rolls back the changes the Harper government made to the Fisheries Act. As has been mentioned by others, the bill protects all fish and fish habitat. The definition of “serious harm to fish” is also being removed.

Those carrying out projects would be generally responsible for avoiding harmful alteration, disruption, and destruction of fish habitat. However, when proponents are unable to completely avoid harm to fish, an authorization permit with conditions may be issued by the minister to allow a project to proceed without contravening the act. I wonder if the opposition is critical of this ministerial discretion, given its criticism of ministerial decision-making power in Bill C-69.

It is important to note the distinction in Bill C-68 between designated projects and routine projects. I have not heard that distinction mentioned on the other side. Designated projects would always require ministerial approval. These are of course expected to be large-scale projects. Currently, under the bill the previous Conservative government was responsible for, projects requiring authorization are determined on a case-by-case basis, which adds complexity and uncertainty for business.

As for routine smaller projects, published codes of practice would provide advice to proponents on how to avoid project impacts on fish or fish habitat. Although the regulations defining designated projects have not been created, I imagine irrigation canals or flood canals on farms would not be considered major, large-scale projects, like dams. I believe they would be considered routine projects, and farmers could just avail themselves of a guide of best practice and do the best job they possibly could. There is a bit of fearmongering on the other side about what the impact of the bill would be on farmers, who are indeed very much the backbone of a large part of the Canadian economy.

Laws are all well and good, but enforcement is always the key. The government will invest $384.2 million to ensure the capacity to enforce the Fisheries Act. Among other things, this money would go toward increasing the number of front-line fishery habitat officers.

Also worth mentioning, Bill C-68 would empower cabinet to make regulations for the rebuilding of fish stocks. It would also empower the minister to make regulations for the purposes of the conservation and protection of marine biodiversity. Again, I am curious to know whether the opposition objects to ministerial discretion in these cases.

Significantly, the bill requires that the government consider the rights of indigenous peoples and traditional knowledge when making decisions about fish habitats. This supports the government's priority on reconciliation with Canada's indigenous peoples.

Finally, Bill C-68 would ban the capturing of whales, dolphins, and porpoises for the purpose of keeping them in captivity. This should be welcomed by those who hold to the protection of marine wildlife. They are people like the beluga specialist, Dr. Pierre Béland, who is the world's most well-known expert on the beluga whale, and who was actually involved in an aqua-hacking conference in Toronto this past weekend. Aqua hacking is a process by which we look for solutions to problems, like pollution affecting our waterways.

Lastly, it is worth noting that extensive consultation was undertaken to arrive at the measures we are debating today. There have been two rounds of online public consultations, and over 100 meetings with partners, stakeholders, and indigenous groups. In 2016, the Minister of Fisheries and Oceans asked the House of Commons Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans to review the previous government's changes to the act. This review resulted in 32 recommendations, which helped shape Bill C-68. This is on top of all the debate that took place in 2012 around changes to the act undertaken within the context of a rather egregious so-called budget omnibus bill.