Bill C-69 (Historical)

An Act to enact the Impact Assessment Act and the Canadian Energy Regulator Act, to amend the Navigation Protection Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts

Part 1 enacts the Impact Assessment Act and repeals the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012. Among other things, the Impact Assessment Act
(a) names the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada as the authority responsible for impact assessments;
(b) provides for a process for assessing the environmental, health, social and economic effects of designated projects with a view to preventing certain adverse effects and fostering sustainability;
(c) prohibits proponents, subject to certain conditions, from carrying out a designated project if the designated project is likely to cause certain environmental, health, social or economic effects, unless the Minister of the Environment or Governor in Council determines that those effects are in the public interest, taking into account the impacts on the rights of the Indigenous peoples of Canada, all effects that may be caused by the carrying out of the project, the extent to which the project contributes to sustainability and other factors;
(d) establishes a planning phase for a possible impact assessment of a designated project, which includes requirements to cooperate with and consult certain persons and entities and requirements with respect to public participation;
(e) authorizes the Minister to refer an impact assessment of a designated project to a review panel if he or she considers it in the public interest to do so, and requires that an impact assessment be referred to a review panel if the designated project includes physical activities that are regulated under the Nuclear Safety and Control Act, the Canadian Energy Regulator Act, the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Resources Accord Implementation Act and the Canada–Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation Act;
(f) establishes time limits with respect to the planning phase, to impact assessments and to certain decisions, in order to ensure that impact assessments are conducted in a timely manner;
(g) provides for public participation and for funding to allow the public to participate in a meaningful manner;
(h) sets out the factors to be taken into account in conducting an impact assessment, including the impacts on the rights of the Indigenous peoples of Canada;
(i) provides for cooperation with certain jurisdictions, including Indigenous governing bodies, through the delegation of any part of an impact assessment, the joint establishment of a review panel or the substitution of another process for the impact assessment;
(j) provides for transparency in decision-making by requiring that the scientific and other information taken into account in an impact assessment, as well as the reasons for decisions, be made available to the public through a registry that is accessible via the Internet;
(k) provides that the Minister may set conditions, including with respect to mitigation measures, that must be implemented by the proponent of a designated project;
(l) provides for the assessment of cumulative effects of existing or future activities in a specific region through regional assessments and of federal policies, plans and programs, and of issues, that are relevant to the impact assessment of designated projects through strategic assessments; and
(m) sets out requirements for an assessment of environmental effects of non-designated projects that are on federal lands or that are to be carried out outside Canada.
Part 2 enacts the Canadian Energy Regulator Act, which establishes the Canadian Energy Regulator and sets out its composition, mandate and powers. The role of the Regulator is to regulate the exploitation, development and transportation of energy within Parliament’s jurisdiction.
The Canadian Energy Regulator Act, among other things,
(a) provides for the establishment of a Commission that is responsible for the adjudicative functions of the Regulator;
(b) ensures the safety and security of persons, energy facilities and abandoned facilities and the protection of property and the environment;
(c) provides for the regulation of pipelines, abandoned pipelines, and traffic, tolls and tariffs relating to the transmission of oil or gas through pipelines;
(d) provides for the regulation of international power lines and certain interprovincial power lines;
(e) provides for the regulation of renewable energy projects and power lines in Canada’s offshore;
(f) provides for the regulation of access to lands;
(g) provides for the regulation of the exportation of oil, gas and electricity and the interprovincial oil and gas trade; and
(h) sets out the process the Commission must follow before making, amending or revoking a declaration of a significant discovery or a commercial discovery under the Canada Oil and Gas Operations Act and the process for appealing a decision made by the Chief Conservation Officer or the Chief Safety Officer under that Act.
Part 2 also repeals the National Energy Board Act.
Part 3 amends the Navigation Protection Act to, among other things,
(a) rename it the Canadian Navigable Waters Act;
(b) provide a comprehensive definition of navigable water;
(c) require that, when making a decision under that Act, the Minister must consider any adverse effects that the decision may have on the rights of the Indigenous peoples of Canada;
(d) require that an owner apply for an approval for a major work in any navigable water if the work may interfere with navigation;
(e)  set out the factors that the Minister must consider when deciding whether to issue an approval;
(f) provide a process for addressing navigation-related concerns when an owner proposes to carry out a work in navigable waters that are not listed in the schedule;
(g) provide the Minister with powers to address obstructions in any navigable water;
(h) amend the criteria and process for adding a reference to a navigable water to the schedule;
(i) require that the Minister establish a registry; and
(j) provide for new measures for the administration and enforcement of the Act.
Part 4 makes consequential amendments to Acts of Parliament and regulations.

Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada

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

Mr. Speaker, the second petition I am presenting comes from Canadians from across the country who want to recognize a particular hashtag that has been trending on Twitter saying that the Prime Minister must go. It has been a top-trending hashtag, and more than 500,000 people have retweeted it.

The petitioners have described their concerns around the Prime Minister, including his divisive comments and attitudes towards Canadians who have made different health decisions. They also note that the Prime Minister has passed laws, including Bill C-48 and Bill C-69, the no more pipelines bills, which cancelled many energy projects and drove away investment through their excessive regulations. Petitioners note that the Prime Minister has generated more debt than all previous Canadian governments combined.

Petitioners want the government to axe the tax, and they note that the carbon tax continues to drive up prices and punish Canadians who have to drive to work or to school or to get groceries. They also note the serious lack of ethics by the Prime Minister: the SNC-Lavalin scandal, the billionaire island scandal, the WE Charity scandal, the $6,000-a-night hotel scandal and the multi-million dollar arrive scam app. As well, the petitioners are concerned with the Prime Minister's inaction on foreign interference.

Therefore, the folks who have signed the petition call on the Prime Minister to resign from office and to call a carbon tax election.

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Branden Leslie, Conservative, Portage—Lisgar, MB]

Madam Speaker, I think I struck a nerve. They seem a little upset by my talking about when their leader's pension comes to fruition and the legislation that is literally trying to move back the election date to enable a whole bunch of them who were elected in 2019 and are probably not coming back to this place after the carbon tax election. They are trying to get their pensions. Once again, last night, the NDP leader put his pension above Canadians and our country. It is another failure, but it is not surprising.

I will continue on to what we could be debating on Monday, if the government, the Liberals, just handed over the documents. We could go to Bill C-73, the nature accountability act, which our environment committee is attempting to do a prestudy on to circumvent the fact they will not hand over the documents, to try to help pass legislation in the future.

Obviously I, as a proud member of the environment committee, have looked at the legislation and I will summarize it like this. It is a plan to make a plan, which is consistent with the current government. It is all about trying to build bureaucracy, help out friends of the Liberals and not actually accomplish anything. It is lazy environmentalism that is best summarized as all of the Liberal government's environmental policy. I asked the minister who was before us on this bill this week, the radical environment minister, about additional spending and/or potential new hiring of bureaucracy that would be needed to enact this legislation should we pass it. He refused to say. He just would not admit there might be.

I asked if he could look for internal savings, given that there has been a 53% increase in the number of senior executives within that department, or maybe we could look internally and try to find some efficiencies, we will call it, within that department. Do we just need to go back to the piggy bank of Canadians and borrow more, increase our debt and increase inflation, just to pay for their reckless, bureaucratically bloated ideas?

I have been here a little over a year now, and I think I have come to understand the Liberals' guiding principles in this place. I would say principle number one is this: When something does not work, just throw money at it. That must be the solution. It looks like we are doing something if we just throw more money at it.

Principle number two is this: When people do not work, hire more of them. Clearly that has been the track record.

Principle number three is this: When something actually is working well, bring in some Liberal insiders and break it. That is how we have ended up doubling the number of bureaucrats over the last nine years. Even the Parliamentary Budget Officer is questioning whether Canadians are seeing an increase in service delivery after all of that new spending.

I have talked to constituents. Anybody who deals with this behemoth of a federal government rightfully has complaints about service standards. Passports are not being returned to people faster. Our PAL, our firearm licensing application, for which many people are currently undertaking the courses to become trained and tested responsible firearms owners, is slowing down. It is not getting any faster. Nobody has said to me, “Oh, I called the CRA the other day and it answered like that. It was a great conversation. I really enjoyed that.” It is the exact opposite.

Nothing is working better under the federal government right now, despite more debt-fuelled spending to once again expand that bloated bureaucracy without outcomes. That is what we should measure, not how much money we throw at the problem. Are we improving the outcomes and delivery of what the federal government should be focused on for Canadians?

Of course, we have the recent NDP-Liberal tax trick. It is another example of the failed philosophy. The reality is that we in this country, industry in this country, unfortunately, has faced regulatory strangulation, for lack of a better term. Perhaps it is the right term.

We will use one example of many terrible pieces of legislation that have continuously focused on driving out investment, driving away opportunities and just trying to add problematic elements for those entrepreneurs and investors, whether they be individuals or Canadian public pension plans, who want to invest in Canada, who want to build in Canada. Bill C-69, the no-more-pipelines bill, or, maybe more appropriately named, the never-build-anything-ever-again-in-this-country bill, is a prime example of how we have made it so unattractive to invest in and do business in this country.

This is evident by the fact of the massive outflow of foreign direct investment that has previously been in Canada but is now going to the United States. I would be surprised if any member of the House has not talked to a business owner in their community who has said that if the Conservatives do not win, they are leaving. It is a real problem, and the data shows it is happening already, because of the strangulation through regulation and legislation under the Liberal government. The Liberals treat the economy as if it were some sort of machine where we just pull some levers and press some buttons and everything will work out just fine.

The Liberals are not even trying to hide their plans. They regularly say that we need to build the future economy and to transition our economy. What they mean when they say that is that they want a government-controlled, centrally planned and manipulated economy, entrepreneurs be damned. The Liberals claim to know what Canadians need and want, and they are going to try their best to make sure the economy matches their ideology. That is not the way the economy works.

Instead of trying to drive economic growth through private sector investment, the Liberals choose to spend, which is why there has been a doubling of our national debt and drastic increases in the price of life. Whether it be through direct taxation on individuals or on companies, or, of course, through the hated carbon tax, it is not surprising that when a party focuses on changing the economy to something it believes it should be, taxing everybody to death, there is a doubling of the price of all homes in this country, a doubling of rent and record-breaking numbers of people lining up at food banks in what should be a prosperous, leading nation.

The Liberals have doubled down as of late. They are trying to bribe Canadians with their own money with the government's $250-check proposal and a temporary tax cut, a pause. It has been called a “cut” a lot in the chamber over the last number of days, but to me a tax “cut” means actually cutting it, not hitting the pause button to give a break for two months on a couple of items deemed essential. The Liberals decided what is going to be listed for the temporary pause.

Oil and Gas Industry

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

Mr. Speaker, given that we have just seen an American election, I can quote another American president, who could aptly describe the Prime Minister's economic policy: “If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.” Instead of doing none of the above, which would allow our entrepreneurs to actually build things on their own without sticking taxpayers with the bill, does he want to know our common-sense plan? We will repeal unconstitutional Bill C-69, we will scrap the cap and we will axe the tax.

Why will he not call a carbon tax election so we can bring home these jobs?

Environment and Sustainable Development

[Alexandre Boulerice, NDP, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

Madam Speaker, I have the same concern.

I remember back in the day, when Catherine McKenna was the environment minister, and she passed the new environmental assessment bill, Bill C‑69. I asked her directly whether there would be assessments for these small reactors. The answer she gave me at the time was clearly no.

Privilege

[Gérard Deltell, Conservative, Louis-Saint-Laurent, QC]

Madam Speaker, I am not a supersenior even though I just turned 60 years old a few weeks ago.

I am very pleased to take part in today's debate on transparency and the sound management of public funds. Let us not forget that just over 20 years ago, Canada was gripped by a scandal that still reverberates today and likely will for decades to come. Of course, I am talking about the infamous sponsorship scandal.

Thanks to the hard work and sharp instincts of journalist Daniel Leblanc and his whistle-blower, known as “MaChouette”, a shameful ploy employed by the Liberal Party of Canada was exposed. Instead of awarding real contracts, the sponsorship program became a mailbox where people could send cheques to themselves in order to launder that money for partisan political purposes. This was what sadly became known as the sponsorship scandal. This led to an inquiry commissioned by Liberal Prime Minister Paul Martin, a man who did the honourable thing by getting to the bottom of the matter. We know how that turned out. A total of $42 million of taxpayers' money was found to have been mismanaged by the heads of the sponsorship program, all to benefit the Liberal Party of Canada.

Twenty years later, we are witnessing another highly compromising situation for friends of the Liberal Party regime. I mentioned a $42‑million scandal just now, but what we are talking about today involves not $42 million, or $100 million, or $200 million, or $300 million, but $390,072,774 that was improperly awarded to friends of the regime. It is not me, a Conservative MP, saying that. It is the Auditor General who conducted an exhaustive study of the financial documents and concluded that over $390 million had been mismanaged.

This scandal began with a fund called the Sustainable Development Technology Canada fund, or SDTC. I am not a big fan of acronyms, but I may be using that one again. There were good intentions behind the creation of the fund in 2001. These stories always start with good intentions, but, as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. The problem is that sometimes people take shortcuts. That is what happened with the Sustainable Development Technology Canada fund, and it is absolutely scandalous. The fund was set up to distribute about $100 million of taxpayers' money every year to companies so they could develop new technologies to reduce their environmental footprint and pollution and help the environment. Unfortunately, it started off well but then veered drastically off course.

It was created by the Chrétien government in 2001. It continued under Harper's Conservative government and under the current government led by the member for Papineau. I would say his name, but I am not allowed. Some people say it is disrespectful to call the Prime Minister “the member for Papineau”, but the Prime Minister is only here because there are people in Papineau who voted for him. In a few months, it is likely that people from Ottawa-Carleton will elect the Prime Minister. He will still be the MP for Carleton. That is why we must always refer to the Prime Minister and any minister or House officer by their riding name, because without their riding, they would not be here.

Back to the main point. The program looked good, and it was off to a good start. In fact, the program was definitely well on its way and, for nearly two decades, it had fruitful results, funding things like high-tech solutions for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and sustainable development technologies. It was created in 2001, as I said. In 2017, under the current Liberal government, the then auditor general conducted an investigation, an analysis, a study of this fund and gave it a very high passing grade.

It was off to a good start. It was good, and it was working. It worked until 2017. That is when the problems started. In 2019, the former minister of innovation, science and economic development, the Hon. Navdeep Bains, decided to appoint as head of this fund, as a member of its board of directors, someone who owned a company that was doing business with this fund. That is when the problems began. For years, the people managing the fund were not both clients and distributors, so they were not in a perpetual conflict of interest.

The former Liberal minister Navdeep Bains, a member of this Liberal government led by the member for Papineau, helped set the precedent that, unfortunately, went on for far too long. For the first time, the individual who was appointed president and CEO had a vested interest in this fund and was awarding herself contracts. Then, two more people were appointed. All in all, the Auditor General's investigation that I was talking about earlier found that this government had appointed nine directors to the board even though they were basically in a perpetual conflict of interest and their companies were receiving money from the fund.

Based on this information alone, the government should have immediately hit the brakes and stopped everything. Appointees should be independent of the fund, but they should know how to administer a fund. I will return to that a little later, but it raises a fundamental issue. People are not appointed to a board of directors to simply show up for meetings, cash their paycheque and walk out. They must be diligent and well versed in company management, but not the type to seek benefits for their own company. Unfortunately, more than nine board members had conflicts of interest.

In June 2019, Liberal minister Navdeep Bains appointed someone with a conflict of interest to the position of president and CEO. Others followed. I would be remiss not to mention the company Cycle Capital, whose chair was appointed to SDTC. In this specific case, the Auditor General's investigation found that approximately $250 million was mixed up in conflicts of interest.

Through the Auditor General's investigation, we also learned that the current Minister of Environment and Climate Change was once a lobbyist for that company, which in and of itself is completely fine. I have absolutely no problem with people working as lobbyists, as long as they do it right. Today, this man is the Minister of Environment and Climate Change. We are talking about nearly $250 million here. That is quite a lot of money, especially since the current minister consulted for the government 47 times a lobbyist. That casts doubt on the situation.

Then, there was a change of governance at the department when Mr. Bains announced that he was stepping down. As is his prerogative, the Prime Minister shuffled his cabinet and appointed the member for Saint-Maurice—Champlain, who, as we know, is an especially active guy for whom I have a lot of respect. Time will tell whether he makes any changes to his career. Let us say that a lot of people are watching him, myself included. This member became the minister responsible for the SDTC fund.

The first alarm bells went off publicly in September 2023. In a situation similar to that of “MaChouette”, who alerted journalist Daniel Leblanc to the sponsorship scandal, a whistle-blower decided to go public and tell the media how this fund was being mismanaged.

When he testified later, as part of the Auditor General's investigation, this whistle-blower said the following:

Again, if you bring in the RCMP and they do their investigation and they find something or they don't, I think the public would be happy with that. I don't think we should leave it to the current federal government or the ruling party to make those decisions. Let the public see what's there.

He also said the following:

Just as I was always confident that the Auditor General would confirm the financial mismanagement at SDTC, I remain equally confident that the RCMP will substantiate the criminal activities that occurred within the organization.

...

I think the current government is more interested in protecting themselves and protecting the situation from being a public nightmare. They would rather protect wrongdoers and financial mismanagement than have to deal with a situation like SDTC in the public sphere.

It was a whistle-blower who said these things in his testimony. This had a direct impact on why we are currently debating this question of privilege.

The first reports were made public and the whistle-blowers were there. In November 2023 the Auditor General launched an investigation. In June 2024, the report was tabled. It is a scathing report on the mismanagement of this fund. Over the five years that were reviewed by the Auditor General, which cover the partisan appointment of Navdeep Bains, a total of 82% of the contracts were illegitimately awarded. This is not some minor oversight, where a few things here and there fell through the cracks. No, it was 82% of the time. Things were done improperly four out of five times. It was either a conflict of interest, or people circumvented the rules of governance, or money was sent directly to the individual's own company. It does not work like that. This happened four out of five times, in 82% of the cases.

Here is a breakdown of what we are talking about. Ten ineligible projects received $58,784,613. In 96 cases that added up to $259 million, conflict of interest policies were not followed. In 90 cases, conflict of interest policies were not followed, and there was no assurance that the terms and conditions of contribution agreements were respected. That is a total of $390,072,774. There are no cents in that total, and I have to say there is no sense in any of this. We are talking about $390 million, 82% of cases, mismanagement in four out of five projects, and conflicts of interest.

The report also makes the current minister look very bad. The Auditor General concluded that he did not engage in enough oversight over what was going on in the fund. The minister, the member for Saint-Maurice—Champlain, keeps saying that he intervened as soon as he found out. I, a Conservative MP, am not the one saying that he did not do his job properly. The Auditor General is the one who found that he did not keep a close enough eye on what was going on. We are talking about $390 million. The sponsorship scandal was $42 million. That is a snapshot of the report's harsh condemnation of how poorly the fund was managed to the benefit of Liberal government cronies.

The Auditor General's investigation focused on management, not on potential criminal activity. As I referenced earlier, the whistle-blower was very clear during the meeting with the Auditor General. The Auditor General's job is to investigate management. It is up to the RCMP to determine whether criminal activities were involved. These are two completely different things. The whistle-blower was very clear that if the RCMP poked around a little, they would uncover criminal situations.

On June 10, the House adopted a motion so that documents could be sent to the RCMP. That is what we asked for and, unfortunately, that did not happen. Accordingly, when the House resumed its work, an order of the House was issued by the Chair requiring the government to produce the documents. That is what we want and that is why we need to get to the bottom of things.

A fund to protect the environment worked for 15-or-so years without any problem. When a new government arrived under the partisan auspices of the Liberal Party, things went off the rails. Four out of five projects were not processed correctly. What is more, $390 million of taxpayers' money was mismanaged. What is the result? The big losers are the companies that were counting on this money to do their work and truly serve this country by making investments in sustainable development technologies, as the name of this fund suggests. Ill-intentioned people across the way made sure this went completely off the rails. The first victims are the companies that want to invest in sustainable development technologies, in the environment.

In that regard, I would like to remind the House that, unlike what the Liberals have been saying ad nauseam, we, the Conservatives, are determined to tackle the challenges of climate change, which we recognize is real.

Just over a year ago, at the much-talked-about Conservative national convention in Quebec City, our leader, the member for Carleton, gave an important speech that is going to go down in Canadian history. In what we call the Quebec City speech, the member for Carleton described our vision for the environment, while recognizing that climate change is real and that we need to adapt to the effects of climate change. The ultimate objective is to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and pollution. This government believes that it can achieve that objective by imposing taxes. We will achieve that objective by taking direct and meaningful action to reduce pollution and create a better environment. That is the Conservative approach. It has four pillars.

The first pillar involves tax incentives for new technologies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Companies emit greenhouse gases. They know why they are doing that, how they are doing it and how to reduce those emissions. The government will give them tax incentives to invest where they need to and where the problem is so that they can reduce their greenhouse gas emissions.

The second pillar is giving a green light to green energy. Now more than ever, Canada needs wind, hydroelectric, geothermal, nuclear and solar power. We need to give these projects the green light, not put the brakes on them, which is exactly what Bill C‑69 does by requiring hydroelectric projects to undergo two environmental assessments. With us, it will be one project, one assessment. We need to speed up the process of implementing green energies.

The third pillar is the Canadian advantage. In Canada, we have all kinds of energy and all kinds of natural resources. To tackle climate change, we need to develop our Canadian potential. As long as we need fossil fuels, we will fight for Canadian fossil fuels. Some spout the fantasy that Canada will no longer produce oil; however, that will not reduce consumption, it will simply transfer production. Therefore, the big winner, if by some misfortune we stop producing oil in Canada, will not be Canada or the environment, it will be Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

The fourth pillar is obviously working hand in hand with first nations for development.

In closing, we are here today because the government refuses to comply with an order of the House. We are calling on the government to do the right thing, which is to comply with the House's order. Then we can find out what really went on. I began my remarks by talking about the $42-million sponsorship scandal. I would remind the House that we are now talking about a $390-million scandal. Speaking of the sponsorship scandal, we are still waiting for the Liberal Party to reimburse its dirty money.

Reference to Standing Committee on Procedure and House Affairs

[Jasraj Singh Hallan, Conservative, Calgary Forest Lawn, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am very honoured and happy to rise to share some opinions, feedback and thoughts on this very important debate today.

I will start by quoting Tupac, who said, “everyday I read the paper there's another lie”. That is what it feels like after nine years of the corrupt, incompetent Liberal-NDP government. Every day, whether someone is opening the news on their phone or opening a newspaper, there is another scandal. There is something the Liberal-NDP government does every single day to embarrass Canadians and embarrass us on the world stage.

We can only expect from the Prime Minister more corruption, more scandals and more crime. This guy has been caught breaking the law more than once. In fact, he has broken the law more than every single prime minister before him. It has not stopped there. As our leader has said, the rot is from the top down. He was such a great role model in breaking the law and having more scandals than any prime minister before him that his ministers did the exact same thing. They were also caught breaking the law. That is the kind of example the corrupt Prime Minister has set for the Liberal-NDP government, which continues to hide from accountability and tries to take advantage of every single possible position that Canadians get put into because of his incompetence, whether through the pandemic, through trying to reward his friends at WE Charity or through this recent slush fund scandal. The new green economy was just an excuse to create the slush fund for him and his corrupt Liberal insiders.

Along with this scandal there are massive conflicts of interest and massively corrupt misuses of taxpayers' money, at a time when there are two million Canadians lining up at food banks in a single month, with a million more projected for this year, a third of whom are children. For the first time in my entire life in Canada, one in four Canadians is now skipping meals. That is not something I thought Canada would be associated with, but that is the sad reality. As Canadians continue to line up at food banks, the corrupt Liberal-NDP government continues to line the pockets of its insiders. As they get richer, Canadians are getting poorer.

There is no hope under the government, which once promised the Canadian dream for millions of Canadians. Whether they have lived here there entire life or moved here for a better future, it is gone; it has become a nightmare. They cannot afford a home. They cannot afford groceries. They cannot fill up a tank of gas like they used to without getting hit with high taxes. All of this is only done so that the Liberal-NDP government can continue to shovel millions and billions of dollars toward rich Liberal insiders.

What is the government doing right now? It is doing anything and everything it can to avoid accountability. It is literally blocking and hiding documents. These documents are so damning that it is doing everything in its power to not have them released, including seizing Parliament and freezing it the way it is right now. One thing is clear: The Liberal-NDP government never acts in the best interests of Canadians. The Liberals only care about the Liberals.

That the government does not want to turn over these documents is a clear sign that there is corruption on many levels, which the Liberals are trying to hide. There is wrongdoing, something so damning to them that they cannot afford to have it come to light so Canadians can see clearly how corrupt the Liberal-NDP government really is. It covers up and blocks this investigation so it can continue to fill the pockets of Liberal insiders. The $400 million of taxpayers' money is not a small amount, at all, for everyday Canadians, but not for the Liberal-NDP government.

Money was sent to board members of these companies that the Prime Minister created a slush fund for to reward them. The Liberal-NDP government talks a big game about going green and the economy of the future, but it is so clear that these are all just words to cover up the corruption so the Liberals can try to get away with it. However, Canadians are smarter than that. With the record of the Liberal-NDP government, Canadians question anything and everything because they know the government does not have their best interests in mind. All the government does is take advantage when someone is down.

As I said before, during the pandemic, the government did everything it could in order to reward its friends. Now, at a time when Canadians are lining up at food banks, it does not care. It created a slush fund of $400 million for its Liberal insider buddies. Whether this money was stolen or wasted, Canadians cannot afford to feed or house themselves now, yet they see a corrupt government that continues to feed more corruption to its insiders. That is the track record of the government.

Canadians are paying for this corruption and greed. They are the only ones being affected. This does not hurt the trust-fund Prime Minister or his other cronies. It does not affect carbon tax Carney or any of the other corrupt insiders who are rewarded for doing absolutely nothing except being friends of the Prime Minister. Everyday Canadians are those hit with higher costs on gas, groceries and home heating, and for what?

In everything the government has done, it has always tried to put a blanket over Canadians' eyes with some type of buzzword. That is how it sold the carbon tax scam. When it first tried to sell this to Canadians, the government said it would introduce a carbon tax that would increase every year and fix the environment. It said that all the forest fires and floods would go away, and it would make sure there would be sunny ways and sunny days for everybody. That was one really big lie it sold under the guise of the environment or climate change. Those were the buzzwords for the government.

Because Liberals do not respect the intellect of Canadians, they said that Canadians would pay into a tax and the government would give them more than they pay. That was another blatant lie by the government under the buzz phrase “climate change”, which all ties into the green slush fund. Both of those lies were proven wrong by their own Parliamentary Budget Officer. Forest fires and floods have not been fixed as a result of the government starting to raise Canadians' taxes. In fact, the environment department admitted that the carbon tax scam is not measured on how much emissions go up or down. It is all a fairy tale.

The second side to it, which the Parliamentary Budget Officer confirmed once again today, is that the majority of households are worse off in what they pay for this scam than what they get back in these so-called rebates. Canadians know that. They do not need anyone to tell them that. They see it every time they fill up a tank of gas, whether to go to work or to drop their kids off at sports or tutoring. When they go to the grocery store, they see prices have gone up. Because it is getting cold now, they turn up the heat in their houses and they see it when they get their bills. They know it has been a scam all along.

I will never forget, when I was first running for election, going to the door of a single mom in one of the communities in my constituency. When I introduced myself, she told me to hang on. She closed the door, took about a minute and came back with tears in her eyes, holding a bill. It was her natural gas bill. I will never forget this. She had a sign on her lawn because her house was for sale. She had to sell her house because she had just been laid off from her oil and gas job, and she was already saying that it was because of the policies of the Liberal government. We already heard about Bill C-69 and the damaging impacts it had on Canadians, our industry and our economy.

This constituent was one of the people affected by the bill. She has two kids. First, she said that she had to sell her house because she could not afford to pay her mortgage anymore. She needed to feed her kids. With tears in her eyes, she then showed me her natural gas bill. She pointed to the line that shows the carbon tax and said that she and her parents had been heating their houses the same way her whole life. She asked, “Why am I being punished with this carbon tax now? What did I do wrong?” She had not changed anything. She had lost her job and wanted to know why she was being punished because it was cold outside. What did she do wrong?

That is the pain the Liberal-NDP government refuses to understand. Its members refuse to acknowledge the pain it causes to these families, all under the guise of climate change. They use these buzzwords and think they can get away with all the corruption. It is the same single mom who will now have higher taxes because the Liberal-NDP government, under the guise of climate change, wants to reward its friends so it can collect more from Canadians, the same ones who are lining up at the food banks.

Liberals do not care that they get hit with all these scandals. It is their track record. That is who they are. They do not care about Canadians. Biggie Smalls once sang Mo Money Mo Problems. With the government members, it seems to be “mo scandals, mo taxes”. Canadians get hit with more taxes because of their scandals. The government members are less concerned about accountability and governing this country; they would rather keep protecting themselves from accountability by covering up as much as they can.

In committee after committee, the common-sense Conservatives bring these scandals to light, but the Liberals are okay and laugh it off because they know they have a partner in corruption in the NDP. Many times, Conservatives bring forward motions and studies so Canadians can see accountability for their money, but the Liberals just laugh it off every single time. Their accomplices and partners in the NDP are covering up these scandals, and the Liberals know they do not need to worry. At the end of the day, Canadians have to pay for all of that. Liberals are totally okay with that because they can all just hide under this cloud of climate change somehow.

During the pandemic, we saw the WE Charity scandal, where $900 million went to Liberal insiders who paid off the Prime Minister's family. There was no accountability until common-sense Conservatives brought this scandal forward.

The Prime Minister would rather prorogue Parliament, as we have seen, than face accountability. That is exactly who he is. He is someone who has probably never filled a gas tank in his life or gone grocery shopping before. That is exactly why he does not care.

The arrive scam scandal sent $60 million to Liberal crony insiders for an app that did not work and that nobody wanted. Once again, under the guise of the pandemic, the corrupt Liberal-NDP government tried to reward its insiders. There were people who literally did no work and got paid off. As Liberal insiders line their pockets and Canadians line up at food banks, the NDP has helped get the corrupt Liberal government through all these scandals one by one.

The SNC-Lavalin case not only unravelled a lot of the corruption and scandals of the government but also proved how much of a fake feminist the Prime Minister truly is. When his brave indigenous justice minister, Jody Wilson-Raybould, stood up to his corruption, what did he do? He did not admit it. He did not take any accountability or responsibility. He fired her. As a fake feminist would, he threw her under the bus.

Not only is the Prime Minister corrupt and scandal ridden, but he also proved how much of a fake feminist he is through that scandal. That is a pattern of the Prime Minister, of being a fake feminist and throwing women under the bus when they stand up to his corruption. He is full of scandals and corruption.

This $400-million scandal is on Canadians once again. The Prime Minister gets to be corrupt. He gets to do whatever he wants to reward his Liberal insiders because it is all on Canadians' dime. He has the Canadian credit card in his hand, and he is spending as though there is no limit. All we have seen from the Liberal-NDP government is more scandals, more corruption and more cover-ups.

The economy is in the toilet right now. We know the carbon tax scam puts a big hole in our GDP, but because of the failed policies, GDP per person in this country keeps on declining. It is at a lower level today than it was in 2014. Can people believe that Canada's output per person is lower—

Opposition Motion—Confidence in the Prime Minister and the Government

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Leader of the Opposition]

moved:

That the House has no confidence in the Prime Minister and the government.

Mr. Speaker, Canada made us all a promise. That promise was that anyone from anywhere could do anything. My parents taught me that. They are teachers, after all. They taught me a lot of things. I was adopted by these two teachers because I was born to a 16-year-old single mom who could not raise me at that time. My parents taught me that despite my humble beginnings, I could get where I wanted if I was willing to work hard. The promise was kept by our country.

Canada made that same promise to my wife when she came here as a refugee from Venezuela when she was a little girl. All six members of her family lived in a cramped two-bedroom basement apartment in east Montreal. Her dad would get up early in the morning to pick fruit. Later on, he would get up at four in the morning to work in the banking sector. Today, we can safely say that the family has succeeded. My wife Anaida has one brother who is a soldier and another who is a carpenter. Her sister is a nurse. The promise of Canada was kept for her family.

That is why I got into politics in the first place. When I was elected, I was part of a government that expanded that promise by lowering inflation, the GST, income taxes and taxes on small businesses. We also balanced the budget, and we did it all while increasing health transfers faster than any government in the history of health transfers. Personal incomes went up 10% after we lowered inflation and income taxes. We made the promise even more achievable.

Now, however, after nine years of this Prime Minister, the promise of Canada has been broken. He has broken a lot of promises. He promised to balance the budget, to reduce taxes on the middle class, and to build more affordable housing, but all of those promises were broken.

What is different about this promise I am talking about is that it was not the Prime Minister who made it. It does not come from him. This is a promise made to every Canadian, whether they were born here or immigrated to Canada.

It makes us so sad these days to see hard-working young Canadians who are 35 and living in their parents' basements. This never used to happen before this Prime Minister came along with his policies that doubled housing costs. Every month, 2,000 people line up at food banks. There are 1,800 homeless encampments across Ontario. This has never been seen before. This is the type of thing we see in third-world countries. People are dying in these encampments. Gun violence is up 120% since this Prime Minister, with the help of the Bloc Québécois, went after hunters while letting criminals and gun smugglers go free.

We need to talk about what the Bloc Québécois is doing. The Bloc Québécois is helping the current government. It voted 188 times to keep the Prime Minister in power and supported $500 billion in inflationary, bureaucratic and centralizing spending. I would add that money for health care and seniors was not part of that $500 billion, not part of that spending, because it is already set out in legislation. There was no need to vote to keep it. What I am talking about is spending on consultants, bureaucrats, interest groups, and big government-subsidized corporations.

At the same time, the Bloc Québécois is voting to increase the fuel tax, including in Quebec with carbon tax 2, which does apply in Quebec, and the capital gains tax, which will force Quebec farmers, entrepreneurs, doctors and home builders to pay Ottawa more money that will be controlled by the federal government. Even the Bloc Québécois's current demands will result in an expansion of the federal government.

It is true that I was part of a government that increased health transfers, but I am not a separatist. The Bloc Québécois says that, in order to fund health care, we need to send more of Quebeckers' money to Ottawa, which will send it back to Quebec. The Bloc wants the federal government to have even more control over Quebeckers' health. At the same time, it recognizes that Quebeckers need the federal programs, which goes against its goal of creating a sovereign state. There is an internal contradiction within the Bloc Québécois.

Now, the Bloc Québécois wants to keep the most centralizing and costly Prime Minister in history in power, a Prime Minister whose immigration policy is out of control, according to his own Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship. That policy has pushed Quebec to the breaking point. The Bloc Québécois says to wait, but waiting never changes anything. The Bloc Québécois is telling Quebeckers to wait, when Quebeckers cannot get health care or social services or buy a house, when Quebeckers see an economy in which the GDP per capita is lower than it was 10 years ago.

The Bloc Québécois says that it does not know what I am going to do. My immigration policy is very clear. Everyone has seen it. I was a member of the party in power, and we will adopt exactly the same approach to immigration as we did 10 years ago. We gave the provinces a lot of power but maintained control of the numbers. We allowed people to come to Canada and meet our labour needs in sectors experiencing shortages, but in numbers that our labour market, housing market and health care system could handle. That is the approach I adopted when our party was in power, and that is the approach I will adopt in the future. I have already explained my policy in a lot more detail than the other opposition leaders. The leader of the Bloc Québécois has said nothing about most of the major issues. I will be even clearer on the campaign trail, when I will outline my common-sense plan to axe the tax, fix the budget, build the homes and stop the crime.

We will axe the tax to make work pay off again, so that servers, truck drivers and plumbers who work more earn more and bring home powerful paycheques. For that to happen, though, people need a roof over their heads. Currently, Canada has fewer homes per capita than any other G7 country. There is too much red tape. I am going to incentivize municipalities to speed up building permits, cut building taxes and free up land for building, while axing the tax that stands in the way of construction, so that young people still have a chance of getting a home. We will cap population growth so that the housing stock grows faster than the population.

We will fix the budget with a law that requires the government to find one dollar of savings for every new dollar of spending. This is how single moms, seniors and small businesses balance their budgets, and they expect us to adopt the same common-sense approach. We will cut the use of consultants, something the Bloc voted to fund. We will cut bureaucracy, waste and big handouts to multinational corporations that are offshoring our money. We will cut all that to bring the money home so we can lower deficits, inflation and interest rates and fund our social services. We will stop the crime not by banning hunting rifles, as the Bloc and the Liberals want to do, but by being tough on criminals and strengthening the border.

By doing this, we will bring home a country where hard work earns a more powerful paycheque that buys affordable food, gas and homes in safe communities, where anyone from anywhere can do anything through hard work. That is the promise of Canada, and that is what we will bring home.

This country made me a promise when I was born. It made the same promise to everyone in this room and across this country. I was born to a 16-year-old single mom who put me up for adoption to two school teachers, who taught me about this promise. The promise was that anyone from anywhere could do anything. That hard work would earn one a powerful paycheque. It would buy one good food and a decent home in a safe neighbourhood.

It is that promise that brought my wife's family here as refugees from Venezuela. There were six people in a two-bedroom, basement, working-class, Montreal apartment. Her dad was up at the crack of dawn to hop in the back of a pickup truck to go out into the middle of a farm field and pick fruits so he could pay the rent. Today, her brothers are a soldier and a carpenter. Her sister is a nurse. Her father has a business with his wife. They have all succeeded. The promise was kept.

It was that promise that got me into politics in the first place. I was very proud to be part of a government that not only kept the promise, but expanded it with the lowest inflation in almost half a century. Incomes after tax and inflation went up 10%. We cut the GST. We balanced the budget. We did it all while increasing health care transfers faster than any government since that time. That is why I welcome every single time they talk about my experience in government. I would like to do the exact same thing in the future, which is to expand the opportunity, expand the promise of this country.

However, after nine years of the NDP-Liberal Prime Minister, that promise has been broken. Everything costs more. Two million people are lined up at food banks because they cannot afford food. This is a record-smashing number. One in 10 Torontonians now go to a food bank every single month. Housing costs have doubled and two-thirds of young people believe they will never be able to afford a home. That has never happened in Canadian history. We see it most tragically on our streets, where there are now 1,800 homeless encampments across Ontario, and there are 35 in quaint, beautiful, once prosperous Halifax. The Prime Minister has admitted in his own press releases that one in four kids are not getting enough food. Linked to this, malnutrition and diseases, which had long ago been eradicated, are making a comeback. We have lost 47,000 people to drug overdoses, more than we lost in the Second World War.

These numbers are stories. They are human lives. When the NDP says that all these people can wait, that we do not need to fix these problems now, but just delay another year and let thousands more die, let thousands more lose their homes and move into dangerous tent encampments, thousands more become addicted to government-funded drugs or get killed by a rampant career criminal who was released once again for the 76th time to unleash chaos in our streets. New Democrats tell those Canadians who are suffering the pain of a brutal economy to wait. It is the worst economy since the Great Depression. The GDP per capita, which is the income per person, is down more than at any time since the Great Depression. In fact, our economy per capita is smaller today than it was 10 years ago. Our income per person has dropped more than any other G7 country since 2019, the year before the pandemic, while the American economy has grown 19%, right next door.

The gap between our per capita GDP and that of the Americans is now worse than at any time since at least World War II, and according to one Liberal economist, Trevor Tombe, the worst in a century.

We have gone from winning the tug-of-war on capitalism with the Americans, where they were investing $30 billion to $100 billion more per year in our economy than we were investing in theirs in the first 14 years of this century, to $450 billion more Canadian money invested in the States than the reverse in the last nine years. Canadian dollars are building pipelines, mines, business centres, shopping centres and businesses that pay American paycheques. I love America, but I do not want to bring jobs to Americans. I want to bring home those jobs and the Canadian promise to this country.

That is why we have a common-sense plan to axe the tax, build the homes, fix the budget and stop the crime. This will be a carbon tax referendum and a carbon tax election. I know that the media has worked hard to try to avoid me saying the words “carbon tax”, as we saw in the extremely dishonest and fraudulent report from Bell Media-controlled CTV, a company whose bonds have been downgraded to near-junk status as its overpaid CEO empties the books to pay his wealthy friends an unacceptably and unrealistically high dividend. He and his cronies at that company are going after me because they know that I am standing up for the people against the crony capitalists and insiders like them.

On a carbon tax election, here is the existential choice. Do we go to a 61¢-a-litre carbon tax, making ours among the highest taxed fuel in all the world, a tax that would grind our economy to a halt, that would force our truckers to leave for the U.S. where there is no carbon tax, leaving nobody to bring goods to our grocery store, parts to our factories or jobs to our people? It will be a nuclear winter if this happens.

That is why common-sense Conservatives will axe the tax. We will bring home jobs, paycheques, businesses and opportunities with abundant, affordable energy. We will fight climate change and protect our economy with technology, not taxes, by approving large-scale green projects that generate nuclear, hydroelectric, carbon capture and storage, and other sources of affordable, clean Canadian energy that will once again get approved when we repeal the anti-development law, Bill C-69. All of this will generate the revenues so that we can fix the budget.

We will fix the budget by unleashing massive growth through the elimination of bureaucratic barriers and firing gatekeepers so that our projects can get built, setting the goal that all three levels of government should aspire to have the fastest building permits process in the entire OECD.

After nine years of tax increases on entrepreneurs and businesses being called tax cheats, we will pass a bring-it-home tax cut to lower the burden on work, savings and investment so that we bring home powerful paycheques and production to this country with lower, fairer, simpler taxes. We will cap government spending with a dollar-for-dollar law that requires we find one dollar of savings for every new dollar of spending. We will cut bureaucracy, waste and consulting contracts, so that we can get the budget close or, hopefully, on balance as soon as possible to bring down interest rates, inflation and debt.

Finally, we will unleash the construction of homes by incentivizing municipalities to grant faster permits, to free up land and to cut development taxes so that we can build in safe neighbourhoods, with jail, not bail for repeat violent offenders, to bring home the promise of Canada, of a powerful paycheque that earns affordable food, gas and homes in safe neighbourhoods where anyone, from anywhere, can do anything.

Our vision is to be the biggest and most open land of opportunity the world has ever seen. That is our purpose. Now, let us bring it home.

Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation Act

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Madam Speaker, my hon. friend is right. Investors are looking at Bill C-49 and they are looking at Bill C-69. They see provisions in the bill before us that would give the very anti-resource Minister of Environment and the anti-resource Minister of Natural Resources power to arbitrarily kill projects, even after investors have invested billions. Who would invest billions into the country on any project knowing that at any time the same government that says it wants to phase out oil and gas can step in and kill a project on a whim for political gain?

This issue is no different, and we will continue to see a lack of investment in Canada while we have the current government in power.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Madam Speaker, that is an amusing question from the member for Winnipeg North. If we could hook up a windmill in front of him, his speaking time, I am sure, could power most of what the Liberals are proposing.

No one believes the Liberals have any intention of helping resource-developing provinces. Whether it is Bill C-50, which is going to have the emission cap and punish Newfoundland as well, Bill C-69, the no-new-pipeline bill, or banning ships off the B.C. coast, the Liberals have zero believability when they say they are there for resource-producing provinces. It is no different in this bill.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise to speak to Bill C-49. As I have mentioned in the House, I have had the pleasure of living across the country, from one side to the other, from Victoria to northern Alberta and even in Newfoundland for a while. Therefore, Bill C-49 hits a bit close for me, so I am very pleased to speak to it.

To sum up Newfoundland, I will tell members of an experience I had. One day in Edmonton, I was door knocking for the first campaign in 2015. A lot of Newfoundlanders live in my riding of Edmonton West, or as I call it, “Edmonton West Edmonton Mall”. A couple was in the garage. It was a hot day and the garage door was open. They were sitting having a beer inside their garage, and we started chatting. They said they were from Newfoundland, and I said I used to live in St. John's, so we started chatting. They invited me to have a beer, so I sat down with them. We had a nice beer together.

A couple of years later, during the horrible forest fires in Fort McMurray, where, of course, a lot of people from Newfoundland were living, the residents had to evacuate. This couple had taken in a couple from Fort McMurray, who also were Newfoundlanders. I was at an event one night at the Good Shepherd Church. It was a fundraising event. I ran into this couple, and they introduced me to this other couple who they were housing. They were complete strangers, but because they were Newfoundlanders, they were happy to take in this couple. We started chatting and they said they were from St. John's. I said that I used to live there and they asked where. I said I used to live on Bindon Place.

It turned out that they were my former neighbours. This couple lived in the lot right behind our house. Back then, if anyone has ever lived in St. John's, they would know it has very lovely winters with lots of snow. The first year I lived there, we had 22 feet of snow, a record amount of snow. It was not until June that I found out we actually had an eight-foot fence in our backyard. This couple was laughing about living behind us. I had to laugh because, at the time, we had this beautiful dog named Doonesbury. He was the world's greatest dog. He would wander on these huge snowbanks, from yard to yard because, of course, the snow was way above the fence. It turned out that he had often visited their yard to do his business, so it was years later that I had the opportunity to apologize for my dog.

There are a few things I would note about people from Newfoundland. They really never leave the rock. I worked in Fort McMurray for a while, and we had the largest club at the time, the Newfoundland club. When we would meet in Fort McMurray, they all had the same wish; they wanted to be able to go back home to work and to get good jobs, which of course were not available. That is why they were in Fort McMurray. When I lived in Newfoundland, every time I travelled to the mainland or away, usually to Nova Scotia where our regional office was, and then flew back to St. John's, I would land at about midnight at the airport, and there were always about 50 to 70 people, families holding up signs and welcoming back their family members, who were mostly coming from Alberta because of work. Since taking over this job nine years ago, I have probably returned to the Edmonton airport 300 to 400 times, and not once has anyone been waiting there for me with a sign. With Newfoundlanders, it was always like that. It was quite amazing.

It is a beautiful city. I enjoyed my time living there, although I cannot say the same about the weather with the massive amounts of snow. I remember that on the May long weekend, I was flying to Nova Scotia; I think it was May 21. The day before, in Halifax, there was a record high of 36°C. I was waiting in St. John's for my wife to come home with the car and drive me to the airport. We had a snowstorm, and she got the car stuck in the driveway in a snowbank. She walked in with our two kids, who were about one and two years old at the time. With tears streaming, she said that she was leaving me and was moving back to Victoria. That almost sums up the weather. However, I noticed a month later, in late June, that we were shovelling the snow in the driveway, and in the back of the house where there was sun, we were mowing the backyard. That is the weather in Newfoundland.

Everywhere I have lived, I have run into people from Newfoundland who want to get back to the rock, but they want good jobs. Bill C-49 I do not see delivering that. There are quite a few flaws in the bill. I want to go over some of them.

Clause 19 of Bill C-49 would open the door to more red tape and likely to delays. We have heard repeatedly about a lack of investment and productivity in this country. It takes 15 to 20 years to get a mine approval and years to get a housing approval. In Alberta, we see people not wanting to invest in the country because they know the red tape and the approval process make it so slow. Clause 19 is going to add to that and going to discourage investment. It would shift decision-making power and licence approvals to the federal and provincial ministers, while tripling the amount of time the decision can take.

The government often talks about how we need experts to make the decisions, yet this bill will take power away from experts and regulators and put it into the hands of the very partisan and biased natural resources minister. Can members imagine anyone who is involved in resource investment in this country looking at our current environment minister or natural resources minister and saying that Canada looks like a great place to invest in because they can trust their opinions? Of course not.

Clause 28 would give the federal minister, with the approval of the provincial minister, the power to outright ban drilling in certain areas and to even halt projects that are already approved and in progress. That sounds a bit like Kinder Morgan and Trans Mountain. That was approved, and it was going to spend billions of dollars just to find out that the government can retroactively change the rules. Who wants to invest in this environment? Who wants to create good jobs in this kind of an environment? If the bill were to pass with clause 28 as written, it would put an end to offshore petroleum drilling in Atlantic Canada, killing good-paying jobs for workers and further strengthening eastern Canada's dependence on foreign oil imports from dictatorships like Qatar and Saudi Arabia.

We have seen how the government treats resource projects in this country. Section 61 and 62 would invariably be abused by the government, and they would attach so many strings that approval for projects would become unfeasible. Does anyone remember energy east? We have TransCanada ready to spend billions of dollars so we can bring Alberta oil and Saskatchewan oil out east to get the eastern provinces off of U.S. oil and off of dictator oil. Instead, the government threw up so many roadblocks and changed the goalposts so many times, it ended up cancelling the project.

Section 61 and 62 would bring the unconstitutional Bill C-69 into the review process, allowing the minister to attach any conditions they see fit to an approval. Sections from the Impact Assessment Act, previously Bill C-69, also known as the no-new-pipeline bill, have been put into Bill C-49. On October 13, 2023, the Supreme Court ruled Bill C-69 largely unconstitutional. The federal government has not fixed those sections to date. If Bill C-49 is passed, as written, it would include 32 references to sections of Bill C-69 that the Supreme Court identified as unconstitutional.

Bill C-49 also includes the discretionary decision-making power of the minister and the entirety of the designated project scheme, both of which are unconstitutional, so components of Bill C-49 may also be unconstitutional. Section 64 of Bill C-69 was deemed unconstitutional, and is referenced throughout Bill C-49, which allows the minister to interfere in a project they think is in the public interest and create any conditions they deem necessary to which the project proponent must comply.

We, in Alberta, know full well what the government does to resource projects. We know full well how it works against resource projects. Of course, we had Bill C-50, the so-called just transition bill, which we called the unjust transition bill. It would be absolutely devastating to Alberta.

I want to give members some numbers the conference board put together. Bill C-50 would destroy 91,000 jobs in Alberta. That is a 58% increase in Alberta's jobless rate. There would be a decline in our GDP of almost 4%, and a 50% bigger hit than the 2008 financial crisis. Alberta revenue would be chopped up to $127 billion over 10 years. That is almost a 20% drop per year.

We see very clearly the Liberal government's intention toward our natural resources. It is kill the resources at all costs, send Canadians into poverty, hurt Alberta, hurt Newfoundland, and hurt resource-producing provinces, which is why we will not vote for Bill C-49.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Mr. Speaker, thank you for pointing that out.

Mr. Morneau said he had pointed out, on several occasions, to the Prime Minister that he had a focus on improving Canada's productivity. Mr. Morneau said, unfortunately, the Prime Minister was not interested in that. He was more interested in distributing wealth, rather than creating wealth.

I think that is one of the fundamental economic problems in Canada today. The person at the head, the Prime Minister, is not interested in these sorts of things. That is very evident with what we see in Bill C-49. There is no interest in talking about the things that drive our economy and that are going to improve our wealth and wealth for Atlantic Canadians.

What are the sorts of things that we can do to improve our productivity, our per capita GDP? We talked about investment already. Bill C-49, the old Bill C-69, scared investment away, and that needs to be reversed. The Conservative members are saying that we need to bring this bill back to committee. These are the sorts of things that we have to look for.

We also need to reduce red tape. That is another common-sense solution to Canada's lagging productivity. We need more innovation. We need to develop our natural resources.

I want to talk about something that is very important to my end of the country, the Pacific region, and that is liquid natural gas.

It was pointed out in earlier debates that Canada has an abundance of natural gas. That is how most western Canadians heat their homes and buildings, and it is used for a lot of our vehicles. Natural gas is much cleaner burning than coal or even oil.

The world wants it. How do we ship natural gas? We liquefy it, we put it into special containers and we ship it around the world. This is a proven technology, and Canada is ready and willing, but not able to do it because the Prime Minister has told other countries there is no business case for this. Unbelievable. He said there is no business case for liquid natural gas.

Other countries in the world, like the United States, for example, see that there is a business case. Where we dropped the ball, the Americans picked it up and they are supplying Europe with liquid natural gas, which is exactly what Canada should be doing. Our allies are asking for this kind of help. It is a perfect solution to their problems, to wean themselves off Russian natural gas, and it is a perfect opportunity for us to grow our economy and improve our productivity.

[Tako Van Popta, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Mr. Speaker, tonight we are talking about Bill C-49, an act to amend the Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord. I am a member of Parliament from the other end of the country, the Pacific Coast, and it is a real honour for me to be joining in the debate about something that is so important to Canada. It goes to show that Canada really is a nation from sea to sea. I am from the other ocean, but it is wonderful to be here with my colleagues who are very knowledgeable about what happens on the Atlantic Coast. Listening to the speeches tonight, I have learned a lot about that part of my country.

Bill C-49 would impose, unfortunately, many of the Liberals' failed environmental assessment initiatives that have been ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of Canada for infringing on provincial jurisdiction. It was a real surprise for me, as I delved into this bill, to see that the Liberals would take the risk of incorporating a lot of the failed clauses of Bill C-69, which we call the “no more pipelines” bill, into this very important legislation about improving the economy of the Atlantic Coast, and I wonder why they would do that. The last thing that investment dollars and investment entrepreneurs want is risk. It has been pointed out before that this bill poses a political risk that is going to drive away investment. Here is a proof point that I think is really clear.

In 2022, there were five offshore land bids in Newfoundland and Labrador at a value of $238 million. If we move forward five months to May 30, 2023, about a year ago, when Bill C-49 was first introduced, which is not law yet. Business people read it and said that they did not want to take that risk, and in 2023, there were zero bids. That is just a really clear example of what happens when the government introduces legislation that does nothing more than introduce a lot of uncertainty into the mix.

If we take a look at what happened with the TMX pipeline, Kinder Morgan, which is a risk-taking company with very deep pockets. It was willing to take on the challenge of twinning the pipeline that had been in existence for 70 years with very little environmental risks involved. It started the project to twin that pipeline, which seemed like a very common-sense project to undertake, and it was, until the federal government started imposing environmental regulatory red tape that really did not do anything but slow down the project. Finally, Kinder Morgan said that it was out of there because It did not want that risk anymore. It is a business that wants to make money, and it could see that there was way too much risk there, so it pulled out. It was willing to walk away from its multibillion dollar investment at that point.

However, the Liberal federal government said that it needed that pipeline and that it could not let it go unfinished. It picked up the project for $5 billion, which was going to cost $7 billion altogether to complete it. In fact, the project is now finished, finally, but at a cost of $35 billion. The federal government is now saying it is for sale, but who is going to buy it? Certainly, not for $35 billion. That is what happens when government gets into business. It should just stay out of business and should let private enterprise do what it does best, which is to undertake projects that have a very good opportunity for earning a profit. I know “profit” is a bad word with the NDP-Liberal government, but let me assure members that private enterprise runs on profit. Profit drives innovation, competition, investment and creates wealth.

This is very important to Canada because our productivity numbers are lagging compared to our trading nations, and this has been pointed out on many occasions. It was recognized by the former Liberal minister of finance, Mr. Bill Morneau, in the book he wrote after he left government, after he was released from the Liberal Party's talking points. He said he had pointed out to the current Prime Minister that one of Canada's biggest economic challenges was its lagging productivity numbers.

Here is a nice, neat example of what exactly that means when compared to the United States. For every American worker who pumps in $100 into their economy, their Canadian counterpart, doing exactly the same kind of work, pumps $70 into Canada's GDP. We are 70% as productive as the United States. Does that mean that we do not work as hard? No, of course not. We are very hard-working and industrious people.

However, we do not have the tools, investment, creativity and tax fairness here in Canada. That is what is causing our productivity numbers to lag. That goes to the wealth of the nation. It goes to the wealth of individual people. This is what Mr. Morneau had pointed out to Mr. Trudeau on what he said were numerous occasions. He said—

[Pat Kelly, Conservative, Calgary Rocky Ridge, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is always a pleasure to join debate in the House of Commons, even quite late on a Monday evening. We are discussing Bill C-49, a bill the government tabled to solve regulatory issues and bring them in line with other bills it had passed, in particular, the Impact Assessment Act, Bill C-69 of the 42nd Parliament.

The problem with Bill C-49, as well as the sudden urge to ensure its passage by invoking closure and using procedural tools to force a vote on it, is this: Since the time the government tabled the bill at first reading to bring existing environmental regulations into line with the other red tape it brought in with Bill C-69, significant portions of Bill C-69 were struck down in court.

The prudent action any government would take in this situation would be to remedy the portions of its existing red-tape regime that have been found to be unconstitutional. The government has been found to have trammelled the constitutional prerogatives of provinces. This is what the Supreme Court found in its review of Bill C-69. However, the government is persisting, through Bill C-49, in taking the same unconstitutional framework and applying it to offshore projects, both oil and gas drilling projects and future renewable energy projects, such as offshore wind production or perhaps tidal electrical generation.

On this side of the House, we are the party of energy. Canadians need reliable, affordable and abundant energy. That energy could come from any of a variety of sources. We support all forms of energy that can deliver on those basic points of affordability, availability and reliability. Different parts of the country are able to produce energy in different ways. The potential for offshore in its oil and gas potential has brought, in fairly recent memory, tremendous economic benefit to Newfoundland and Labrador. For the first half or more of my life, this was by far the poorest region in Canada, with the lowest per capita GDP. It is a part of the country that really suffered economically and had the lowest standards of living in Canada.

We have seen in a generation what energy production can do for that part of the world and how so many people from Newfoundland and Labrador have also helped build Alberta and its energy projects. In addition to that, there is tremendous potential for offshore renewable energy. However, taking this unconstitutional model from the government's earlier bill and applying it to projects offshore, renewable or non-renewable, is not going to give affordable, reliable and available energy for Canadians or create the export opportunities that an abundance of energy may give. This is a flawed approach.

One would think that the Liberals would not need the opposition to move an amendment that would seek to refer the bill back to committee where it could be studied further and amended to deal with the reality of the Supreme Court's decision on renewable energy. However, they have even made it muddier still by tabling, in the House, a budget implementation act that further confuses regulatory issues and compliance and congruity between these different acts, by tabling a bill that overlaps and attempts to do some of these things the bill before us would do.

One would think that the Liberals would hold back on the bill before us and call the BIA tonight, and it is confusing because it is numbered Bill C-69, but have that debate instead and move that bill along. I mean, I will vote against it and I hope that other members will too and so that we can bring the government down and get on with the carbon tax election. However, either way, whether the bill passes or not, surely that is a more prudent present step than forcing through Bill C-49, which has obvious constitutional and regulatory problems to it. So, if they will not do it for that reason, if they will not do it for compliance or get the order right with the BIA versus Bill C-49, at least recognize that the Supreme Court has already weighed in on the substance of the bill and found it unconstitutional. The bill belongs back at committee, or perhaps just not called at all.

The Liberals have tabled a lot of bills, and a lot of them do not go anywhere. In fact, over these last few weeks, they have tabled a number of bills that they have not called, and so I do not understand, in terms of the management of its legislative calendar, why suddenly the drive to call the bill before us.

We have seen the kind of red tape that this government has given Canadians. The Liberals have already hindered traditional and alternative energy development in Canada. Under Bill C-69, no projects get approved. It is the no-more-pipelines bill, and it is going to become the no-offshore-wind-development bill and the no-offshore-drilling bill. To top it all off, I understand from speaking to a number of Atlantic members of Parliament that they have also managed to upset the stability and the investment climate for the fishing industry, because they have not consulted those in the fishing industry who stand to be affected by the bill. This government is so consistent in its muddy, muddled approach to regulation and the creation of red tape. It is time for this government to maybe fire some gatekeepers instead of finding new ways to tie up Canadian businesses and scare away investment.

However, scaring away investment is exactly what these bills have done. Bill C-69 led to capital flight from this country. We have seen how Bill C-49, even its tabling, has also triggered capital flight from Atlantic Canada in terms of projects abandoned and the dearth of new applications for drilling or offshore projects in the wake of the bill. As my colleague for Calgary Nose Hill said earlier, Canada has become a country where political risk is driving away investment, because decision-makers, those who allocate capital, do not know from one year to the next just what this government is going to do. It piles on laws that do not stand up in court and then it is charging along here tonight by calling the bill before us and having a debate on it as if the Supreme Court decision did not happen. It happened, and it cannot be ignored. The bill was tabled before that decision, and it does not take that decision into account. It should be taken back to committee where maybe it can get sorted out, or it can just be held back and not called again.

The Liberals have so many other bills that they seem to want to get approved but have not called and have chosen instead to call Bill C-49. I would call on the government to get a hold of its legislative calendar, get a hold of its constitutional issues, and go back and fix the bill if it is going to call it again.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I agree. At one point, I would have said that I do not understand what the government is doing, but after a while, one knows full well what they are doing. The Liberals and the NDP are antidevelopment. They are anti-Canadian jobs. They are doing everything they can to suppress investment in this country.

Look at what Bill C-49 would do. It is going to be caught up in the courts. There is going to be chaos and confusion. Look at Bill C-69 and what it has done to our natural resources sector. It has been devastating. It has been struck down in court. It will be the same thing here. The Liberal record after nine years is turning away investment in this country. We go through the laundry list and they keep saying they are proposing new ideas. It is the same failed approach that got us in this mess in the first place. It is time for a fresh start. Bill C-49 and their other efforts are not worth it.

[Eric Duncan, Conservative, Stormont—Dundas—South Glengarry, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the member from the Bloc a little, and I am going to disagree with her a little as well.

I agree that this is a shoddy bill. The government has been warned. The Liberals and the NDP want to ram this through, and they have been reminded over and over again, including in some great speeches here tonight, of how this is going to end up in the courts, like Bill C-69. I agree with her on that. They are putting it through and they do not care. It is going to get stalled for years and they are going to blame everybody but themselves.

I find that I disagree with the Bloc, though, too. I agree a little more, if I could, about simplifying the environmental assessment process: one environmental assessment, federal or provincial. We do not need the double red tape taking years. The list goes on of the number of companies and projects that have been caught up in this.

The thing with the Bloc Québécois is that it wants to cancel, as an example, all offshore petroleum or the wonderful oil and gas sector, with a number of jobs in this country. The irony is that when we cancel a project here in Canada, what happens is that countries like Russia, Venezuela and other countries that do not give two hoots about emissions reductions are going to take up that limit. Trust me: They are not having the same conversations about conservation and good measures that we are having here in Canada.

The Bloc Québécois is saying these projects and paycheques belong in Canada, but it wants to export them around the world.