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.

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you for focusing me again, Mr. Chairman.

The fact that Mr. Simard brought up my muscle cars just made me think back to the 1970 Challenger Hemi that I bought, which I had for a period of time, and the big-block Chevelle convertible, which was just phenomenal. Then I bought a Chevrolet Vega that somebody had wedged a little 327 Chevy into, and that thing just went like a bandit.

That really refocused my thoughts, my little diversion there on muscle cars, and what that has to do.... The fact is that the industry we have here in Canada that is using our natural resources is becoming more and more efficient. I was talking about the amount of hydrocarbons that I was burning back in the seventies. Now, with the technology that we have today that is making the same amount of horsepower, we're using about half of the fuel that we did before. That's amazing. Why is that important? It is important because if we're burning half the fuel, we need to produce half as much, or we can sell that much more. Whether it's in the oil and gas industry, whether it's in the forestry industry or whether it's in mining, which is what we have in Timmins—James Bay, we know that if we can become more efficient users of the natural resources that we have, they're going to last longer. They're also going to create lower emissions.

I think that creating targets that are reasonable and sustainable is important. We know that this Liberal government, in spite of the carbon tax, which was supposed to be a cure-all for everything, hasn't met any of its emissions targets—and that's unfortunate—except for the one year during COVID when nobody was driving or moving anything.

What we need to do is protect our natural resource industry. I know there are a lot of advances in technology. I know that solar and wind are important, and I know that this is the direction that Bill C-50 would like to take the natural resources industry in here in Canada. It was interesting, because we had industry on the Hill here last week, and there were industry representatives. I went to one of the receptions and was talking to one of the producers there. They were boasting about how their whole facility was solar powered. They showed me the rows upon rows of solar panels. I told them that was very interesting. They said that they have a connection to the grid in the case of the solar system not being able to provide enough energy to properly run their plants. The question I asked this young lady was this: If there wouldn't have been a subsidy to have installed these solar panels up front, would it be economically viable to be using solar energy versus the hydro energy that we have in Manitoba? The answer was no. The only way that a lot of this stuff works is if we take tax dollars and subsidize it. I think we have to look seriously at whether that's the direction that we need to go. Do we want everybody else to pay to subsidize our reduced energy bills? I don't know if that's fair. I don't think it's the right way to do it.

My point in talking about muscle cars and where that whole industry has evolved to today is that as time moves along, industry and technology advance to the point where we become more efficient. I think that over time, that happens in the energy industry as well. However, when we force it to happen this way, there's nothing efficient about it, and it takes huge amounts of tax dollars to achieve the results that we get. I believe that we'll get the same results at the end of the day if we allow these things to naturally progress, if we allow industry and technology to use our resources responsibly to create our desired results while using less of our resources, and I think we can do that.

We know that there are a lot of things that we need to consider when we're studying these bills here at the committee. I think that if we get representation in here from the mining industry, in particular from the Timmins—James Bay constituency, we're going to hear reports from these miners and company owners about how difficult it is for these junior miners to start up and how absolutely necessary the products are that they produce.

I listed several of the junior mining companies in the list that I provided for committee just a few moments ago. You could see that several of these mines are lithium mines. Lithium is a project that's required in the production and development of the batteries that need to power our electrified economy, and in these batteries that we want to make in Stellantis and Volkswagen. I think Ford is considering something as well.

It's important that we hear from witnesses from Timmins—James Bay about how they'll feel about it, and not only on the labour side. I think the labour side is very important. We want to make sure that Canadians can bring home powerful paycheques, and that they can keep a higher percentage of those paycheques in their pockets and not have to pay them through increased costs related to the carbon tax—with the higher cost of groceries, the higher cost of home heating, the higher cost of fuel in their vehicles. With powerful paycheques, we're going to build a powerful economy that is going to continue to drive the welfare of our country.

We're also going to be able to see our export markets expand. We know that Europe has a huge market for us. There are 500 million people as part of the CETA trade pact that we have access to with the free trade agreement. We can access these people with our natural resource products here. We have lots to offer them, whether it's LNG or whether it's our clean hydrocarbon diesel fuel and gas, whether it's forest products, or whether it's the lithium that comes from the mines—the cobalt, uranium—all the stuff that we need and other countries need that we have. We have that here.

We need to be responsible with how we're going to develop these resources. Bill C-69 was an abject failure in that regard. It got nothing done. It made it burdensome for the industry. It created an untenable situation for anything to happen in the natural resource sector. I think that's something we can improve on.

There's a reason this committee should be looking at Bill C-69. It should also be looking at the decision on plastics, like I said before, because of the importance of milkshakes and other things.

This committee needs to be working on legislation that the courts have said is not constitutionally compliant. It's absolutely important we do that, especially if we think we should be studying legislation that references failed legislation. We need to get it right on Bill C-69. We need to get it right on the regulation from the Liberal cabinet on single-use plastics. I think those are the issues this committee should be seized with and should be studying.

Mr. Chair, I think I've made my point, and why it's important that we hear from witnesses from Timmins—James Bay in forestry, in mining, because of the products they produce and also because of how important it is to our studies.

With that, Mr. Chair, I think I've made a good argument.

I've heard from several committee members on why they're not going to support my subamendment. I don't know why they wouldn't want to get witnesses in from Timmins—James Bay. What do these folks have against folks who live in Timmins—James Bay? Why wouldn't we want to hear from them and hear what's important to them?

[Ted Falk, Conservative, Provencher, MB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank my colleague, the member for Red Deer—Mountain View, Earl Dreeshen, for a wonderful explanation of why we need to consider this subamendment. He really created a great platform to help Canadians who are watching on TV understand what this is really about, the importance of the work this committee does and the importance of the order in which we do things in this committee.

Thank you, Earl, for doing that. You've helped, I think, all of us around this table, and certainly viewers who are watching, to understand the importance of the work that we're doing here, as well as the importance of the sequence of the work that we're doing.

Getting back to the subamendment, which was to make sure that this committee will be hearing from witnesses from Timmins—James Bay, someone might ask questions. Why Timmins—James Bay? What is so important about Timmins—James Bay? Why do we need to hear those witnesses?

It is quite simple: There is a lot of natural resource activity in that particular constituency of the country.

I acknowledge that there are 338 constituencies in Canada, many of which have natural resources. Mr. Dreeshen talked very articulately about the natural resource sector in northern Alberta, but Timmins—James Bay has forestry and lots of mining. Some of the bigger mines there are the Alamos Gold project and the Victor Mine. We hear lots of the big names fairly regularly. They come to Ottawa and solicit tax dollars for consideration, but there are a lot of others.

The concern is that we're going to be looking after labour there. That's why they want to discuss these bills, both Bill C-50 and Bill C-49. They cite the concern of wanting to make sure that labour is properly addressed there. We know there is labour involved in mining activities.

I also want to point out to folks who are watching, and to this committee, that there are lots of junior miners we never hear about that also have employees who also need to be able to count on that paycheque coming every two weeks so that they can feed their families, heat their homes and put fuel into their vehicles. These are all things that have been very negatively impacted, Mr. Chair, by a carbon tax. We've seen the price of all of those things significantly increased by a carbon tax.

It's interesting that this Liberal government carved out a geographical area of our country and gave it a carbon tax exemption or holiday. It's very interesting, because apparently it's an ideological platform of this government to have a carbon tax, and now it's carved out for a geographical area—Atlantic Canada—a carbon tax exemption to make life more affordable there.

None of the other areas of Canada received that same exemption. They didn't receive it because they're heating with more fuel-efficient methods, like hydroelectricity or natural gas from Alberta. They experienced the same cost increases due to the carbon tax, yet they did not get the benefit of that carve-out exemption that was provided to Atlantic Canadians.

We know the reason that happened. It's because the Prime Minister's polling numbers were plummeting in Atlantic Canada, and he tried to address that by throwing them a bone, as we would call it in the industry. Maybe it was keep them happy and get their support onside.

There are people in Timmins—James Bay who have experienced the same increased cost of living in heating their homes, putting fuel in their vehicles and buying groceries at the grocery store, all of which have been impacted by the carbon tax. That's no small matter here. I think this committee should be seized with the cost that carbon tax has added to everyday living.

I want to list some of the junior miners that find themselves domiciled in Timmins—James Bay. I went on the Internet to get a list of the junior mining companies in Timmins—James Bay. I would like to make mention of them, because they're why we need witnesses from these mining companies.

They include Patriot Battery Metals, Osisko Mining, Li-FT Power, Critical Elements, Lithium Royalty, Brunswick Exploration, Fury Gold Mines and Arbor Metals.

As well, we have Azimut Exploration, Benz Mining, Power Nickel, Midland Exploration, Vanstar Mining, Max Power Mining, Superior Mining, Champion Electric Metals, Ophir Gold, Consolidated Lithium Metals, Hertz Lithium, Comet Lithium, Sirios Resources, FE Battery Metals, Targa Exploration, Harfang Exploration, Quebec Precious Metals, Canadian Critical Minerals, Lithium One Metals, ALX Resources, Stelmine Canada, Dios Exploration, Niobay Metals, Medaro Mining, Opus One Gold, Green Battery Minerals, Mosaic Minerals, Stria Lithium, Genius Metals, SPOD Lithium, Metalex Ventures, Battery X Metals, TomaGold, Clarity Metals, SLAM Exploration, Durango Resources, Lancaster Resources, Rockland Resources, Arctic Fox Lithium, K9 Gold, QcX Gold, Bullion Gold Resources, Victory Battery Metals, Brigadier Gold, Lithium Lion Metals, Musk Metals, MegaWatt Metals, Fabled Copper, Nordique Resources and Q2 Metals.

That's the listing that you can find on the Internet, Mr. Chairman, about junior mining companies in the James Bay area. There's a whole host of them there, and all these mining companies have employees who work in that area and are dependent on their paycheques. What we do in this committee matters. It matters greatly, and that's why it's so important to hear from them.

However, we also need to go back and look at the platform this premise is based on and why we need to reconsider, very carefully, whether we're addressing things in the right order here. We know that the Supreme Court issued a reference on Bill C-69, which is the impact assessment legislation this government passed, which has also been referred to in the industry as the “no more pipelines” bill. We know that there was a referral that struck down about 80% to 85% of that bill as being non-charter compliant or constitutionally challenged.

This committee should be absolutely seized with getting that legislation back here to committee and identifying the areas that the Supreme Court has referred to as not being compliant with the Constitution. We should be looking at those areas and correcting them, if they can be corrected. I suspect that in a lot of instances we're going to have to just discard big segments of that bill, because it just doesn't pass the litmus test.

I think it would be very wise of us to conduct a study on that bill first and to bring in witnesses from Timmins—James Bay and see how that particular piece of legislation has impacted their companies and impacted their employees, because the Supreme Court says that it doesn't work. Then, also, the Federal Court recently ruled that the ban on single-use plastics also wasn't constitutional. I know that the NDP-Liberal government is moving ahead with contesting that further and challenging that decision. I know it is a very welcomed decision from the Federal Court.

Mr. Chairman, I get into my riding very late in the evening when we're done here in Ottawa, and I like to treat myself. I swing through McDonald's on the way home and pick up a strawberry milkshake. I have about an hour and a quarter drive to my home from the airport, so I do that quite frequently. I was reminded again last week when I went home that I put that paper straw into the strawberry milkshake and started sucking it. Well, that just doesn't work so well. You have to look at the cost-benefit aspect, and with a paper straw, the suction that you need to get that triple-thick strawberry milkshake from McDonald's up the straw and to your palate takes an incredible amount of work. We very much welcome the decision from the Federal Court to strike down this plastic straw ban.

That decision is going to be welcomed by Canadians as they go to have their strawberry milkshakes, which are an important staple here in our Canadian diet. Both of these decisions are important to this committee. Our committee should be consumed with addressing these two pieces of... One is a regulation that came out of cabinet, I suppose—the plastic straw ban—but certainly the decision of the Supreme Court on Bill C-69 is something this committee should be bringing back and studying.

Why is it important to prioritize that? It is because both Bill C-49 and Bill C-50 reference Bill C-69, which the Liberals have proposed as the next pieces of legislation on our work schedule here at this committee. If they're referencing a flawed piece of legislation, we know in turn that this legislation is also flawed. That gives us many reasons that we should be prioritizing the study of Bill C-69 over Bill C-49 and Bill C-50. Let's get Bill C-69 right, or let's actually recall all of Bill C-69 and discard it and present legislation to this committee that will give Atlantic Canada a regulatory platform for tidal power.

We could talk more about Bill C-50, which was at one time called the just transition, and then industry referred to it more as an unjust transition, which probably more adequately described the intent of that bill. The Liberal government, in an effort to try to save face, renamed that bill “sustainable jobs”, when the sustainable jobs were already there. They're in oil and gas. They're providing above-average income levels for the families involved in that industry, and in the production of the world's cleanest and safest fuels by way of diesel fuel, gas, aviation fuel and liquefied natural gas.

When this Liberal government came to power back in 2015, there were 18 LNG projects on the board. Do you know how many of them have actually been built and are in production at capacity? Zero. Zero projects have been completed. It's important for Canadians to know that. The Liberal government has either been the cause of these projects being cancelled or of their not being completed.

Meanwhile, the Americans, whom we refer to a lot around this committee when we talk about the IRA.... To folks watching on TV, the IRA is the Inflation Reduction Act that President Biden has implemented in the United States. It's a massive spending bill. We always seem to want to compete with that piece of legislation on the Canadian side. I don't know why we're so eager to race to the bottom with Joe Biden, but for whatever reason, that's the direction the Liberal government has decided to pursue.

In spite of the IRA, and in spite of the massive spending and tax credit regime the Americans have created south of the 49th parallel, they have still built and completed almost half a dozen LNG projects. Canada had opportunities in Europe and Japan to sell our liquefied natural gas, coming from the cleanest processing plants the world has ever known. Our gas and oil industry has the cleanest and safest energy model. Instead of our being able to capitalize and sell to countries like Germany, the rest of Europe and Japan, our clean LNG products are now being sold by the Americans. That's another opportunity that has been missed by the government, while at the same time it wants so desperately to compete on so many levels with the American government on its IRA.

I guess another example of that is the massive amounts, the billions of dollars—I think it's close to $31 billion—that this government has committed to large multinational corporations that want to build battery production facilities here in Canada. We're going to be giving them $31 billion of taxpayers' money.

I think Canadians need to understand what this Liberal government has committed to here, because it is no small sum. It will create some jobs, but by the way, 1,600 of them, we're told now, will come from Asian countries in the form of temporary foreign workers. When Canadians were first told about the investment into these lithium battery manufacturers, I don't think they were told that these temporary foreign workers were going to be the mainstay of the employee workforce. That's something on which we haven't seen complete integrity and openness from this government, but it's come to light now. Many of these workers who are going to be employed in these battery plants that are being built on taxpayer dollars here in Canada are actually going to be foreign nationals. That's another aspect of trying to compete with the Americans on their IRA, on their Inflation Reduction Act. I think, Mr. Chairman, that's just a race to the bottom.

I think we, as Canada here, are incredibly blessed with our God-given natural resources, whether it's oil and gas, whether it's in our mining sector, or whether it's in our forestry, all things that this committee should really be studying. We need to develop these resources. They weren't given to us just to keep in the ground and stay buried, covered in a pile of dirt.

No, we have these resources, and we've been given these resources to be good stewards of them. I think the mining industry and the oil and gas industry have shown that they're responsible and that they are good stewards of the resources that we have here in this country. We have a phenomenal amount. We're the envy of the world.

We also have clean water. We probably have the largest amount of clean water resource on the globe, and I think our natural resources companies have been great stewards in protecting the integrity of our clean, fresh water resource that we also have here.

However, there's mining that needs to happen, and we know that Bill C-69 has made mining very difficult. It's happening in Timmins—James Bay with the regulatory process that's necessary to open up new mines and to continue to develop existing mines. It's very difficult, and that is something that needs to be studied.

Just recently someone pointed out to me—and it's not a recent fact but an age-old fact—that when we look at the air that we breathe, the composition of that air.... We hear so much about carbon and the need to reduce the carbon input and we hear that we're responsible for creating all this carbon pollution everywhere. It was pointed out to me that 78% of the air that we breathe is nitrogen and 21% is oxygen, so 99% of the air that we breathe is nitrogen and oxygen. The other 1% is comprised of argon and carbon, and 0.03% is carbon.

I don't have the data to show that it's true, but some folks say that the impact of the carbon in the air could be manipulated by about 20% by human activity. If that's true, then it would be 0.006 of 1%. That's six one-thousandths of a per cent of impact that all human activity could actually have on the quality of the air we breathe in relation to carbon. Those are things that we need to consider before we light our hair on fire talking about carbon pollution.

Do we still want to reduce pollution? Absolutely, we do. Do we still want to find out more efficient ways to burn hydrocarbons? We've seen the industry really step up and do that. We've seen miles per gallon per vehicle significantly increase in the last two decades.

I remember growing up in the 1970s. I'm a little behind my colleague Earl here, from Red Deer. He grew up in the 1960s and I grew up in the 1970s. I was really fond of muscle cars.

Some of the muscle cars that I owned at that time.... The very first one I ever bought was when I was 16. It was a 1970 Mustang Mach 1 with a 351 Cleveland automatic. It had a shaker hood. It had the louvres on the rear window. It was blue with black accents. It was a wonderful car. I would have been very lucky in those days to get 15 miles to the gallon—very lucky. I had an awful lot of fun burning that gallon of gas for every 15 miles I drove.

We have cars being produced today with the same amount of horsepower, or more, that will get 30 miles to the gallon. That's a testament to industry, to how far technology has come. We've reduced the amount of hydrocarbons we consume for the same amount of horsepower that we create, whether that's in gasoline-powered engines or diesel-powered engines. We know this carbon tax is particularly burdensome to our transportation industry, which has some of the heaviest users of diesel fuel in our country. We know that every semi truck driving down the highway is burning diesel fuel. The construction industry also is consumed with heavy equipment that—

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

Thank you very much, Chair.

Again, as we speak about various parts of the country, whether they be provinces, regions or each and every one of our constituencies, this is the point I wish to make, and I'm about to make it with regard to the dear friends from the Bloc that I had with me in Mexico City.

As I said, the public comments were these: “I love Canada. I love Quebec. Two great countries.” I didn't see eye to eye with that part, but nevertheless, that was what was being said.

I realized that they wanted to make Canada strong because it gave them an opportunity to be strong within a Canada that was going to be able to go around the world and be beneficial and that then they would be able to work well within that in their aspirations on sovereignty and so on—because it was the Bloc—and that it would have gone someplace for them.

Now when I listen to my friends from the Bloc, their commentary is this: “This country is so dysfunctional that we can't wait to get out of here.” It's quite a change in 12 years from “We love this country, we love your country, and we want to work together because we can see that it's positive” to the labelling and the pitting of one group against another. Believe me, it has done a lot of damage to this country.

I can see what the Bloc would do with that and how they would simply ask, “How do you expect us to want to be part of this group? You guys can't get along. It's east against west.”

Let's talk about a language against this and about the different types of energy. I would love to for us to be able to work through with the energy we have. Getting back to the natural resources side of it, I am happy that we have the great ability of this country to have so much of our electricity coming from hydro power. The point that gets me—and many people have heard me say this—is that those dams didn't just happen. The environmental damage that is associated with flooding vast sections of Canada in order to ensure we have electricity is something.... I've always said that you have to measure the environmental impact from the first shovel you use to dig something up to the very last shovel you use to cover it up.

Now, when it comes to hydro power, it's going to be a long time before we cover it up, but we should recognize that which is there. I can go through all the scientific aspects of it. I know a little bit about science. I can go through all of that, but that's not my point. My point is the metrics of analysis. When we then talk about, for example, nuclear energy.... Again, I'm dealing with this because we're part of natural resources.

Thankfully, with all of the discussions we have had over the last number of months as we've had the nuclear industry here and they've been chastised for all of the different things and so on, finally they got some recognition, recognition that if we want emissions-free electricity, then we shouldn't be damning the nuclear industry in the same way that we're putting the oil and gas industry in the crosshairs. Thankfully, that has happened. I'm happy to see that, for many different reasons, but we still have this....

I constantly hear from people I know, who know better, that what we must do is minimize and get rid of our hydrocarbons. Well, when I fly to Vancouver, I take a look at where they load all of the coal. I know where it's going, as does anybody else who flies in and out of Vancouver.

That's okay. However, if you fly over Fort McMurray, it's not okay. All this oil that has been seeping into these rivers in northern Alberta for millennia.... We've now put a stop to it. We collect it and sell it around the world, but this has been demonized. I keep telling people that the oil and gas industry hurt itself with this. It felt, “Well, anybody would understand what we're doing and how much better we are doing it than any other place in the world.” They didn't do a very good job of selling that. Therefore, it was easy for groups, especially from Europe—although we certainly have groups here in Canada—to say, “You know, the tar sands campaign”—of course, tar is something you get from a process, not what we have there—“will be something we can get a lot of money out of.” That is exactly what took place. It took place for decades. It's pitting one group against another.

I know the massive dams on these rivers are going to look like that for hundreds of years. When a pit has been completed in Fort McMurray, within 40 years, you cannot tell the difference between it and any forest that would be there. Actually, after 20 years, you can't tell the difference, except the Alberta government won't allow a complete reclamation—or whatever the term is—until after 40 years. That's what you get in Alberta. You don't get that in Venezuela. You don't get that in Nigeria. You get it in Alberta.

I have to listen to different groups demonize the oil and gas industry in my province—and worse than that, in my country. That's the part I believe is very important, which is why, when I look at what is happening with Bill C-69, I believe it is rather important that we respect that process and work from there. Those are some of the things I believe we should be paying attention to.

Talking about our own constituencies, I know oil and gas found disfavour, because it was easy for environmental groups to get money to demonize it.

Look at our agriculture area. I've been a farm kid since I was born, and I still continue to farm. I know we have a tax on agriculture as well. We do a great job. That's why, when I was at the OSCE, we talked about food security. When I went to Asia Pacific and the ParlAmericas and so on, food security was critical. I could tell them what we do in agriculture—the significance of Canadian agriculture and of what we sell. I also tied in how that's what we do with oil and gas.

The next part of it is this pass we seem to give the mining industry. Here we have an opportunity to do mining for rare earth minerals and that type of thing. We believe the people who made all their money going against oil and gas and conventional agriculture are going to let mining get this great pass.

When we talk about what is happening in Timmins or in Sudbury or in my riding, it's “Don't worry about that. That's for the greater good. That's for electric vehicles or that's for some other type of thing we have. We'll be fine. Just you guys stop with this hydrocarbon development, because we believe that's a problem”—“we” being the Minister of the Environment and the Minister of Natural Resources.

That is the reason I am so concerned about the way we are going in this country. We are looking at ways that we could pit one group against another. I do not believe that it will change with this present administration, and that is something that bothers me.

I would think that somewhere along the line, people could look at what we do and what Canada does, be proud of that and speak about the things we do together, rather than people such as me having to go to international fora. I listen to our government talk about how embarrassed they are that we are a major oil and gas-developing nation and that with any luck they will be able to come up with another plan. Those are the things that concern me.

There are other aspects when we speak about Bill C-50 and the transition away from traditional oil and gas jobs, about how things are going to be so much better if we can just tie into the new world order that we see and be prepared for all of us to use a new energy source and change our way of doing things.

Depending upon which way the earth is turning, it takes me four hours on average to get from Alberta to Ottawa, which is about the same amount of time it takes if I want to fly to Mexico. We have six time zones in this country. When I look out the plane window, I see the amazing things we have, the natural beauty and the water. I know that we have minerals there. I know the other things that are associated with it, and I am proud of every part of this.

My wife's family came from Prince Edward Island. They were there in the 1800s. They were mariners. I have a great sense of pride for that part of the country and for the Maritimes. I have friends I went to school with who are from Quebec. They are great, hard-working people. Then there's Ontario and all of the western provinces.

In my role with indigenous affairs and northern development, I have met some amazing individuals in that community. Believe me, I would tell people that if they wanted to find a CEO to come and work in their company, they should talk to these people. They understand what's going on. They know what is taking place.

My thought when I became an MP was that we would find ways of bringing this country together and be proud of it, rather than finding ways of dividing. Sadly, we seem to make sport of that. That is something that I feel is not standing us in good stead.

I've been fortunate in that I've spent time on the agriculture committee. I've spent time on public accounts, so I understand how the funding of government goes. I also understand what happens when things go awry with government. I've also been on international trade, so I know how important it is to trade our goods around the world. I know how well respected our goods are around the world.

I've been in South America, talking to mining companies there that are Canadian. We have a lot of Canadian mining companies. Yes, sometimes they take over a mining operation that was not looked after very well, so we have groups here in Canada that will attack them.

I remember one group—I believe it was in Colombia—that basically made a point. They said they needed consultants. Here's how they were going to use consultants: They weren't going to take some American consultants who came down, or somebody from Canada. They were going to go to the local colleges in these countries and bring these people to be their consultants so that they could have respect and talk to the priests, the community leaders, the government, the environmentalists, the farmers and everybody. That's how they were going to deal with that.

They brought the groups together. These Canadian mining companies basically said that they needed to do that to gain trust, so that's what they did.

At the same time, I remember that here, we had motions coming to the floor from the Liberals that were basically criticizing our mining companies around the world. By extension, then, that would include these that were doing a great job.

It gets a little frustrating when the mindset is, “Let's be critical”. The mindset is to look at these things and find out just what to do to minimize the efforts of expert Canadians.

I suppose I'm going back to my 34 years as a teacher in math, physics, biology and chemistry—primarily math and physics. The problem is that we have preconceived notions of what is happening in the world.

One book I've been looking at is called Factfulness by Hans Rosling. He was a medical doctor as well as a statistician. He goes through a series of questions that he would ask the public. They're simple types of things. I'll just take an example. I think you'll be curious to see this.

In all low-income countries across the world, how many girls finish the first five grades of school? Here are the options: (a) 20%; (b) 40%; or (c) 60%. In low-income countries around the world today, how many girls finished the first five grades of school? I'm not a teacher anymore, so I'm not going to make a test out of it. It's 60%.

That's not what the results were when they gave this question to the general public, to people we depend on in different world-wide organizations or to academics. They got less than what it would have been if they had randomly chosen it.

Another question is, “In the last 20 years, the proportion of the world's population living in extreme poverty has...”. The options are “almost doubled”, “remained more or less the same”, or “almost half”. Well, most people think poverty is getting worse, but no; it's half of what it was before, because of different things that we've done.

For life expectancy in the world, they had a) “50 years”; b) “60 years”; and c) “70 years”. This is in the world. It's 70 years. That's what it really is.

I don't want to belabour it, but my point is that people like me have these preconceived notions of what is taking place. I grew up in the sixties, and these were the things that we were all bombarded with. We teach teachers—the older ones teach the younger ones. This is our preconceived notion of what is taking place in the world, so that is something we present.

However, when we look at it statistically, we see that we've been wrong. Governments bring together their sayers of sooth, but they're wrong, and we make decisions and policies that are related to that. The only thing on which they agree with us is the 13th question.

Actually, I want to go to the 12th question. It asks, “How many people in the world have some access to electricity?” The options are 20%, 50% or 80%.

Well, it's 80% of the world that has access to electricity.

Another one asks “How many of the world's 1-year-old children today have been vaccinated against some disease?” Option a) was 20%, b) was 50%, and c) was 80%.

The answer is 80%.

We don't think that way. We don't look at those statistics. We believe the things that we are told through social media, through reports that we see on various news agencies. I won't go into the ones that I think are somewhat off.

The only one on which it seems that we have it right says, “Global climate experts believe that over the next 100 years, the average temperature will: a) get warmer, b) remain the same, or c) get colder.”

Well, it is true that global climate experts believe that it will get warmer.

Again, I mentioned that it was the sixties when I grew up. It was a little before that when I was born. However, I remember all of these different stages—here is the next ice age; here is what is going to happen with our ozone layers; this is going to happen here, and everything is going to be flooded. It was all of these problems. We are going to have massive hurricanes. We are going to have massive forest fires. We are going to have all of these types of things. If you believe that narrative, then you are prepared to make statements that say that the Earth is boiling and you will believe somebody who says that.

The facts don't bear it out. The sad reality is that one of those other groups that have been criticized for not doing their job has been forestry. Of course, forest communities live around the forests. They have not done those things that were necessary for them to be able to protect themselves. The opportunities are there, but they just have not used them.

How can we here, in Canada...? We've had some terrible things, and I know people who have lost homes and so on. We have people who categorically will state that it is all because of climate change. Well, the U.S. doesn't have a carbon tax, and this last year has been one of the least severe fire seasons ever—with no carbon tax.

I know that this correlation doesn't make sense, any more than the correlation makes sense that if you charge a carbon tax, you're going to be able to solve these problems.

The correlations don't make sense, but they sure make good clips in the House of Commons. They make pretty good clips when you say, “This person here is a climate denier.” I've had that accusation.

All I simply said is that I remember going to Drumheller Valley and looking at a sign that said that 10,000 years ago, we were under a kilometre of ice. Yes, there has been global warming. At that time we were only under a kilometre of ice. Montreal was under two miles of ice, so they had even more hot air there as things changed.

I don't know how many people know about Lake Superior. It wasn't there about 15,000 years ago. It was carved out of the glacierization. The fact is that as massive dams of ice broke as the climate started warming, the Great Lakes were formed. That's the reality we have, but nobody pays attention to those things because they'd sooner talk about somebody being a climate denier or this sort of thing. There are all these things that nobody pays much attention to, so it's important that if we're going to make up policies, we take a look at all politicians who give that simple argument as to how this can happen and how that can happen.

In our case, it's how far down the road we are going to be before we can fix some of the problems we see, and there are a lot of them. The main one is that we have such wealth in this country. We have so many unique innovators in this country. We've heard—and I can't remember whether it was here in the natural resources committee or back in the environment committee—about a group who built hovercraft in Ontario. In order to get funding to proceed, they had to go through the U.S., and where did they get their funding from? It was Canada pension plan. That's where the money came from when they went to the States to be able to develop the programming they had.

It seems a little odd to me that we can't figure out a way to make those types of things happen. Nevertheless, that's what we are dealing with when we have ideologically driven leadership, because they stop thinking.

We talk about how every one of our communities is affected by the IRA in the U.S., which Biden has signed on to. We are expected now to change all of our rules for our investments and all of the things that are taking place.

The first thing that the Biden administration did when they came in was to shut down Keystone XL. When they realized that they needed a little bit of diesel and they needed a few other things, they asked where they were going to get this from. They made deals with Venezuela to get their heavy oil.

Again, not a lot of people understand the science of all of this, but heavy oil has all of the different things you need. It has what you're going to use for asphalt and it has what you're going to use for diesel. It has the gasoline, and you have the propane. You have all these things.

It all comes out of one pot. It's how you deal with it that is important, but we seem to forget that. We seem to forget how much of what we do and what we use is actually coming out of the hydrocarbons that we have. That's why these different regions get a little upset when someone does not respect those parts of the country that champion these new technologies.

Before people just say, “You don't like the concept of a carbon tax” and all this other kind of stuff—because I know I'll get that—Alberta has had a fee for heavy emitters for close to 20 years. There was no way that each and every one of those businesses could take an amount of money and efficiently fix or change their industry, so they put it together into a fund, and that fund, as it grew, was then able to fund industry-wide solutions, such as carbon capture utilization and storage, such as taking nanoparticles of carbon and putting them into different types of products, whether it was steel or whatever. Those are the things that are done if you are wise.

How do you get to the stage where you can afford to be wise? You take a product you have, make it the best in the world, sell it and get tax dollars to build schools and hospitals in your province. You have tax dollars that go to helping other provinces in this country. You have tax dollars to help with all the needs the federal government has, and you have tax incentives and dollars to make the environmental aspects of what we have in this country even better. What can you do with that? You sell it around the world.

What are we going to do with things the way we have set it up? We will chase that innovation out of this country, similar to the hovercraft, and then we will buy it back from others around the world. Where is the logic to have other provinces suggest that Alberta is doing all this damage to the world and that they are going to do all they possibly can to stop it? Where is the advantage to having political parties that believe it worked for Greenpeace and for all these other groups? Lots of money comes in if you fight them, so that's what they will do again. Where is the advantage? How does that build a nation?

As I mentioned earlier, I can see where the Bloc would look at it and say, “Who cares? We don't want you guys to build a strong nation. We have an exit strategy.” However, it should matter to my friends in Quebec. It should matter to my friends in the Maritimes. It should matter to my friends up north. It should matter to my friends in Ontario. It should matter to my friends in the west, and it should matter to my friends whom I have met and have spoken with for many years around the world when I say, “If you would just come to Canada, and if you would just look at what we produce, how we produce it and why we would do it this way, you will be impressed.” That would mean there is no better place for you to invest. Certainly, if you need products, take a look at Canada and what Canada has to offer. That's where I'm going with this.

I believe that such an amazing country, with 338 ridings at this point in time that depend so much on oil and gas and its byproducts.... We look at the things we have around this table and at the things we wear. All of those things are critical. Why would we want to go someplace else or not have that opportunity to at least sell and buy that product? Those are some of the things that I'm extremely concerned about.

As I've said, on the world stage, we have lost our way. I can't believe the way in which we are portrayed around the world at this point in time. I have friends who have been in India, Asia and so on, and when I was on the international trade committee, we spent time with the ASEAN countries and talked to them. This was at about the time when the Prime Minister went to India with his family and sort of embarrassed things a bit. Maybe some people didn't think so. Nevertheless, even Liberals who were with me on that committee—I won't name names—were scratching their heads as to what was taking place.

We had the same sort of thing happen with trade developments. When we talked about CETA, the ball had already been hit out of the park. All this Prime Minister had to do when they brought it back to home plate was to put his signature on it. That is how far CETA had been. Then, of course, he decided, “Well, there are a few other things I'd like to see added to this thing, so let's open this up.”

The same kind of thing happened in Vietnam in the meetings there: “If I show up on time, it's probably because I've been working on these great things to add a few more letters to the agreements.” The people who were there would look at it and say, “Well, why? Why would you do that? I thought we were talking about trade. I thought that was the rationale. I thought that was the reason we had.”

Again, on this latest issue they're trying to say, “Don't you know that Ukraine has a carbon tax?”, and all of this kind of stuff, thinking that they've really found something special to hang their hat on. Well, when you go from a 56:1 ratio to an 80-some-to-one ratio, of course people knew that they had to sign on to an agreement to be part of the EU, but when you take a look at the other aspects of it, again, it's back to the history of what happened in Berlin.

Canada was saying, “Hey, we're going to do this carbon tax, so why don't you guys get on our side and make it so much easier?” In Birmingham they said: “Well, we've even gone a little further because we have a Minister of Environment and a Minister of Natural Resources who just love this stuff, so we're going to say that as Canadians we are going to do all we can to limit the expansion of hydrocarbons, even though it's here in our country and it would really hurt us more than anybody else.”

That's really where we're at. Those are the reasons I am so concerned about how each one of our ridings is going to deal with the issues that are taking place. Again, I go back to what I said about from the first shovel to dig something up to the last shovel to cover it up.

I know that there was a great discussion having to do with biodiesel or ethanol and those types of things as farm products. All I can say is, that's great. I know we can do these things. As a matter of fact, probably 30 years ago I was approached by a group to commit about 500 acres of barley to a project that would have turned the barley into ethanol. Then you would take the ethanol and move it off, and then you would take the mash and you would feed it to animals. Then you would take the methane you would have from those animals and that would help run your system.

There were two things.

First, it would have probably been useful. The only thing was that they said it would work dependent upon subsidies that we could get from the Alberta government. Well, I look at subsidies as “that's my tax dollar” and “that's my neighbour's tax dollar”. I can't do something just because it came from my neighbour's tax dollar. It has to do something on its own.

It would have been a neat thing to do, but I didn't feel that it was right. It got to the stage where we talked about zoning and how we would do all of this stuff, and how it was a “good idea”, but it wasn't the right thing at the right time.

If I were going to deal with what I was getting out of this, I would have had to look at how much fuel I was going to use for this 500 acres of barley that I had to commit, so I would have had to treat it in exactly the same way and manage it and analyze it in exactly the same way I would if I were selling it for cattle feed. I'd have to do that. I'd have to then look at the cost of the facility and the cost of everything else associated with that, as well as the trucking. Those were some of the metrics I looked at.

We need to do that for everything else we do. When we say, “Oh, I think we'll go to Timmins and we'll start digging up there, and everybody's going to be happy.” Well, that's not likely. We can try to find all of the rare earth minerals around Canada, and it's not that we can't do it, but at what cost?

Right now, we're still sending coal to China, and if they're producing and mining in their country, where are we going to buy these things from? We're going to buy them from them, because they are part of that supply chain. With them as part of that supply chain, we will not be able to compete. We will not be able to compete with the way in which they have taken over African countries and the way in which they get cheap labour in order to produce these products that we all seem excited about having.

We're going to say we're going to do it and we're going to say because the U.S. is doing this, we have to make sure we get in on it as well. Again, as I mentioned before, sometimes we hear things and we think that we know everything, so I'm going to preface some of this.

When we hear that companies in Europe—GM, Ford, Stellantis and so on—are actually cutting back on their electric vehicles because of the supply chain, the costs, the high electricity rates, then we start to think that yes, this was a good idea, but how do we make it work? How do we measure the environmental impact as we do the mining in our region and do all of the other things that are there?

We, as Canadians, go over and above everything to make sure that we have satisfied any group that wants to send in a brief or have a discussion, and we do that. We encourage it, so we should actually listen to them when they come.

That's the issue we have right now. That makes it kind of difficult for us to proceed.

As I mentioned before, if you have billions of dollars of subsidies to these companies, even if they're suspect as to how they might get built and by whom, still it's $15 billion from Canadians for this kind of a project. Wouldn't it better to look at the strengths we have and take vehicles, as we have, that have gone from 10 or 12 miles per gallon to 30 miles per gallon? Wouldn't that be a better way?

As we purchase this fuel that we have, we then put that money into our schools, our hospitals and our national defence and into all of the things that Canadians need. We help out those provinces that for some reason or other have a different way of analyzing their balance sheets. I would think that would be a wise thing to do.

How do you do that in a country that pits one group against another? How do you that when the mandate letters for the Minister of the Environment and the Minister of Natural Resources just cut and paste from one to the other? How do you look at a department?

I understand government. They are beholden to the thoughts and ideology of a government. I understand that's how it's done, but how do we find our way through when this is what we are doing to this wonderful nation of ours?

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

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

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I, too, have been waiting for this opportunity to speak and to discuss some of the significant aspects of what we have before us, including, as other speakers have just mentioned, what the order should be as far as Bill C-49 or Bill C-50.

Of course, I think many people are aware of the major concern with Bill C-69, which of course affects all ridings. It affects Timmins; it affects my riding, and it affects every one of the 338 ridings in the country where the Supreme Court has found that there are aspects of Bill C-69 that are unconstitutional.

We then look at Bill C-49, which has, at initial count, 33 references to the points in Bill C-69 that have been deemed unconstitutional. Therefore, the suggestion is made that maybe we should actually look at that which the Supreme Court said was so egregious before we as a committee...or for that matter before the government decides to push forward with legislation that it knows is formed on something that has been challenged.

This, I believe, is the critical aspect of the discussion. When we say there is something that the people in each of those 338 ridings need to be aware of, it is the court's decision on those parts of Bill C-69 that have already been made to the citizenry. How then can we justify dealing with legislation until that has been dealt with?

How is the government planning on dealing with that?

We listened to the Minister of the Environment basically saying that he doesn't think they're right, so we'll just kind of shuffle it around a bit so that we don't have to worry about that.

Well, that isn't exactly what the Supreme Court suggested as the solution to the fact that these points were considered unconstitutional.

We have seen the same attitude since then. The point I want to make has to do with attitude. That is with the plastics ban. Again, the Federal Court is saying that this, too, has remnants that are unconstitutional. The suggestion is just that we'll run roughshod over this, too. It's not an issue.

Of course, then we come back to the stage where we say that this is natural resources, so the fact that the Minister of the Environment chooses to get engaged in that discussion and so on.... Maybe we should just deal with what the Minister of Natural Resources has to say. Of course, we've made reference to having both of them, and even others, come to speak to the committee.

I made a very significant point, when I was on the environment committee, of looking at the mandate letter of the Minister of the Environment. Then, when I moved here to natural resources, I made a special point of looking at the mandate letter of the Minister of Natural Resources.

I challenge people to find where the major differences are. When we have a Minister of Natural Resources who has not been charged with finding the very best opportunities for every one of Canada's natural resources and when he is using the same set of metrics he had when he was environment minister or when the new environment minister came into play, how does that become significant as far as natural resources are concerned?

We have heard, through our discussions in the past, that parts of their legislation have been unfair. It has been unfair to regions. It has been unfair to provinces. Quite frankly, after the many years I spent on aboriginal affairs and northern development, I know it has been unfair to our indigenous communities, because they have a lot of money already in the game of natural resources.

We talk about some of the other features of how the government looks at our natural resources and how we, as a country, can manage them.

I'll go back a number of years to a meeting with the OSCE in Berlin. At that time, there were discussions and different things taking place. Of course, the environment, science and technology were some of the main features there. The contribution Canada brought to the table in an amendment to one of the major supplementary items being discussed on the floor among this group of 50-something countries—it is beyond the European Union—was that.... They wanted that group to more or less rubber-stamp the fact that Canada believed a carbon tax was the very best solution for managing environmental concerns. That was our contribution to the discussion. We had others: some workings on helping women be involved in parliamentary associations and that type of thing, and on helping out journalists who were being attacked. There were a lot of other things there, but that was our contribution—

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

Of course, it is good to be able to continue this conversation. I was a little surprised actually that the Liberals denied consent to allow this meeting to continue because I was happy to continue talking about the divisions that Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has inflicted upon our country. Chair, let me just highlight a couple of examples of this.

On the very human level, when I speak with constituents an increasingly common sentiment that I hear, and this is tragic, is that my constituents feel that Canada is broken. In many cases, Chair, they will share things with me like they're simply not sure about whether our country has a future. In fact, there are some who feel like there's no option but to see that the consequences of disunity could be absolutely devastating to the future of our country.

Chair, the reason why that's so tragic is that it could have been avoided and should be the priority of any leader and any member of a governing party. Their first priority in government should be national unity. Yet we have seen over the last eight years an intention of dividing Canadians for narrow political gain. In fact, we saw that just this past week in how the Liberals intentionally included in a free trade agreement with Ukraine a carbon tax mechanism. It's shameful that they would be so intent on division that they do this even with a country at war. To play that sort of politics is absolutely shameful. Chair, I have the court ruling here on the Impact Assessment Act, and we see that it was found to be largely unconstitutional, Bill C-69.

This should be no surprise to anybody who has listened to commentary on this subject over the last six or so years since this was introduced. Every province—in fact the only thing we see provinces united in these days it seems is that they're united against the actions of Justin Trudeau, and that's certainly not a record that one should be proud of. I talked about the carbon tax. It has intentionally divided Canadians, including I mentioned the Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement. It was the Conservatives who initially negotiated that back in 2013. In fact, it was Stephen Harper who looked Vladimir Putin in the face and told him to get out of Ukraine. That's leadership, not like what we have seen by this division perpetrated by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

We've see the carbon tax and this recent carve-out that benefits 3% of Canadians. It continues to punish the other 97% of Canadians, including those who are struggling to pay their heating bills for propane, natural gas and other forms of energy that are still subject to that. We see that intention to divide. In conversations around equalization where there should be the willingness to have real conversations with provinces, we have not seen that under Justin Trudeau. He may talk big about a photo op, but then when it comes to what happens behind closed doors, it's division and pitting region against region. We see that with the continued conversation around the emissions cap.

Chair, I could only imagine if the Prime Minister was to pick any other part of the country and tell them that they cannot do what they are good at. Could you imagine any other sector, whether it be manufacturing or whatever the case may be, pick a part of the country and if the federal government was to swoop in and say you can't do what you're good at.... Mr. Chair, it is absolutely shameful the division that is being perpetrated on this country by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his Liberals.

We see that with the Keystone XL. This is the tragic irony, Chair, especially with the Keystone XL pipeline. The Alberta portion of that pipeline is in my constituency, and I saw about 2,000 jobs lost because our Liberal Prime Minister refused to work with his American counterpart because they were so blinded by ideology around the future of energy security in North America that they cancelled the pipeline at a time when Conservatives were vocally saying the entire time that energy security would be key to our world's security future. Yet, we see that the Liberals capitulated. We see that with the just transition, a policy that is designed to divide Canadians for narrow political gain. We see this with LNG.

Again, there were, I think, 18 projects on the books when Justin Trudeau took office. Never before in Canadian history.... Whether it be Canada's fiscal situation, whether it be with the economic opportunities, Justin Trudeau was handed a circumstance that any world leader would be jealous of, yet he squandered it away for narrow political gain.

Chair, the reason that this is so applicable to the conversation we are having today around this amendment and the motion is because the Liberals, throughout the last eight years, have led our country to a point where Canadians are pitted against one another and where there is division layered upon division. The result is that we have seen less prosperity.

The result is that we have seen political divisions that are incredibly harmful. In fact, just this past week, you had Liberals who were almost incoherent because Canadians would dare question that they were concerned about the activist environment minister—the same environment minister who was criminally charged for environmental activism—who would try to influence so-called independent senators, although they certainly showed their hand in the last week. Members of that Liberal party were so outraged that Canadians would dare to share an opinion that contradicted their official narrative. It is truly unbelievable and shameful.

Chair, many of my constituents, as I shared at the last meeting, remember Pierre Elliott Trudeau and the divisions perpetrated upon our country. In fact, I often still hear—Rick would probably remember some of those days, as I wasn't born yet—that many are not surprised that the son of Pierre Elliott Trudeau would continue along that path where he—you've heard of the Trudeau salute—would continue to divide this country for political gain.

It is unbelievable. It is unacceptable, and Canadians deserve better.

Chair, I hope for this committee that Liberal, NDP and Bloc members will take seriously this common-sense amendment to try to take some of the language of division, the politics of division, out of this motion, which has been brought forward for no other reason than to continue perpetrating that division upon Canadians, east versus west, north versus south, urban versus rural and, in this case, the rest of the country against Alberta.

I look forward to continuing the discussion on this. I hope that this committee will see that better is possible, that we can bring home a country that is once again unified. However, the history of the last eight years certainly does not give me and my constituents optimism in that regard. That is why we so desperately need a change. We need a government that is willing to put the unity of our country ahead of personal partisan political goals, and as we increasingly see with the number of scandals that seem to be making Liberal insiders rich, their personal financial interests.

Thank you very much, Chair, for this opportunity. Certainly I'd be happy to expand further on the connection between this amendment and the history that has led to the point we're at today, and I certainly will do so. As I cede my time to the next person on the list, I would ask to be put back on the list so that we can continue this conversation.

Thanks, Chair.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

I guess at this point I'd like to introduce a motion. I move that:

The committee report to the House that the Federal Court of Canada has overturned the Liberal Government’s cabinet order banning plastics, declaring the order, “unreasonable and unconstitutional”, and “invalid and unlawful”, that the committee urge the Liberal Government to act in accordance with Canadian law, and no longer introduce legislation and Cabinet Orders that contravene Canada’s laws and constitution.

Mr. Chair, I'm very surprised that this matter has not been raised at the environment committee yet, which is why I'm raising it today.

The Federal Court of Canada has deemed this Liberal government's plastic ban “unreasonable and unconstitutional”. Those are the exact words from the court. This is the second time in nearly a month that the courts have ruled that the Liberal government's environmental policies are unconstitutional. Last month the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the Liberals' “no more pipelines” bill, Bill C-69, was unconstitutional, and now we know that Minister Guilbeault's plastic ban is also unconstitutional. I wish he would just quit hiding from this committee so that we could ask him some quick questions on his failed policies, but he keeps hiding from Canadians.

It's been over 240 days since this minister has testified at committee. He has been embarrassed by these court rulings, but Canadians deserve answers. I expect that the Liberals and the NDP will once again block this motion and continue on, but the Conservatives believe the government needs to quit introducing legislation that contravenes the laws and the Constitution.

I hope we can vote quickly on this matter and move forward with our study.

Foreign Affairs and International Development

[Rick Perkins, Conservative, South Shore—St. Margarets, NS]

Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise today on the discussion about the report from the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and International Trade entitled, “The Russian State's Illegal War of Aggression Against Ukraine”.

As Canadians know, Conservatives have always stood with Ukraine. Those who have had the pleasure of hearing at committee some stories from my personal history will have heard that, back in 1991, when the Soviet Union was collapsing, I was the senior adviser to Canada's foreign minister.

I can remember the weekend that I spent on the phone with the Prime Minister's Office, the Privy Council Office and former deputy prime minister Don Mazankowski, the first Ukrainian deputy prime minister of Canada, discussing what we should do. The Soviet Union had not quite collapsed, and Mikhail Gorbachev was trying to institute his glasnost reforms. It looked like, within a few weeks, there would be a collapse.

We had a long discussion about recognizing Ukraine first. We were the party that recognized Ukraine on that weekend, December 2, and we were the first country in the world to recognize Ukraine as an independent country, separate from the old Soviet Union. That was a momentous thing because, of course, we have a large diaspora of Ukrainians in Canada. I am proud to have played a very small and minor role as a senior adviser to the then minister of foreign affairs, Hon. Barbara McDougall, when we did that.

We do support all of the recommendations in this report, but I would like to draw attention to a couple of particular interest to us. The previous speaker spoke about recommendations 12 and 13, and I will come to that, but I would like to focus a little on recommendation 8, which says:

That the Government of Canada work with its international and domestic partners to improve the coordinated implementation and enforcement of sanctions against Russia, by working to identify all assets connected to designated persons and closing any loopholes that may exist.

There are a lot of loopholes that still exist today. Not to toot my own horn, but I worked on creating the legislation the Government of Canada still uses today back in 1991, when there was the coup in Haiti. We wanted to impose economic sanctions, globally through the OAS and then through the UN, on Haiti and the illegal coup of Haiti's first democratically elected president.

There was no power to quickly impose economic sanctions. We quickly created within about four days a piece of legislation that was introduced and passed unanimously through the House and Senate within about 48 hours to create a bill that gave the Governor in Council the power to quickly move and impose economic sanctions.

We know these sanctions are leaking, and I have raised this before in committee. I said it as a member of the fisheries committee. While the government has targeted specific individuals, and all of those are justified, what it has not done is looked at the leakiness of the sanctions overall. I have an example that has had a very large impact on Atlantic Canada. The snow crab fishery is a very big fishery off Newfoundland, and 52% of the crab fishery caught in Newfoundland was, until this war happened last year, bought by Japan, through contracts.

When the war broke out and Russia was desperate for cash, it started to sell their snow crab at a much cheaper price on the global markets. Most countries respected the fact that that money would be used for fuelling Putin's illegal war and did not bite. Japan did bite, broke every contract in Newfoundland and stopped buying all their snow crab from Newfoundland. Now Japan buys most of their snow crab from Russia, helping to fund their war.

The minister and the Liberal government have never raised those kinds of issues with counterparts. We have raised them with the minister, and the minister was totally unaware that this had happened.

It is not unusual for a Liberal minister to be unaware, but one would think that, when we are dealing with sanctions in a war, it is not just about the individuals but is about the flow of cash that is going in by buying goods of our G7 allies.

I would also like to comment on recommendation 12, which reads, “That the Government of Canada not grant a sanctions waiver to Siemens Energy Canada Limited for Nord Stream 1 pipeline turbines....”

Remember, with the turbine, Russia did this fake thing about needing the turbine for the pipeline that brought natural gas and oil into Europe. It brought in a need for repair, and the government said it was no problem, to bring it in here and we would repair it. Then the war broke out and Russia said it wanted it back in order to facilitate the continued supply of that oil and natural gas, supposedly. The government acquiesced, granted a waiver, sent it back to Russia and allowed it to continue to ship oil and natural gas to fund its war.

In fact, if we look at some of the testimony in this report, it quite clearly shows that a number of witnesses were flabbergasted the Government of Canada would allow such fakery to happen.

In addition, in a rare moment of clarity on the liquefied natural gas issue, the Minister of Natural Resources said at the time, and this is from page 31 of the unanimous report, that he could not “overemphasize the depth of concern on the part of the Germans, but also on the part of the European Union, with respect to the potential implications associated with their effectively not being able to access natural gas.”

The report goes on:

In addition to the concerns expressed by Germany and the EU, the Minister [of Natural Resources] noted that, in conversations had with the United States, “they reflected and shared the concerns about the divisions that could end up undermining support for Ukraine....”

That was the Liberal minister, but yet when the Chancellor of Germany came to Canada and Germany was begging for our natural gas to deal with the issue of the impact on energy supply in Europe because of this illegal war, the Prime Minister said that there was no business case to ship it oil.

Maybe there is a case to get it done because there is a war on, but of course we were not ready to do that. When the Prime Minister and these Liberals came to power in 2015, there were 15 LNG plants on the books. As they progressed with their agenda, their no-pipelines bill, Bill C-69, or the “no capital bill”, as I call it, to drive capital out of Canada, we have how many? I am sure there are members here who could tell me how many have been built since those 15 were proposed and going through the environmental system.

I hear a colleague say zero. Maybe the true answer the Prime Minister should have given the Chancellor of Germany is that he messed up and that he was not ready to deal with the issue of making sure good, clean, ethical Canadian natural gas could be accessed by Europe, which has become totally dependent on Russia, in case of emergencies. Unfortunately, that was not his answer. He glibly said that there was no business case for it. I am not sure the Prime Minister has actually ever read a business plan, but he told the Chancellor that, and so Germany went and obtained the natural gas it needed from dirty dictatorships. That is the great foreign policy we have had.

My colleague mentioned the fact that if the Liberals were truly interested in supporting Ukraine, they would have put provisions in the free trade bill to enable and foster the ability of our country to supply more munitions to Ukraine and to manufacture them. In fact, if there is a gap in political risk insurance by the EDC, it is easy for the Government of Canada to show its commitment to Ukraine by using the Canada account to help Canadian munitions manufacturers located in Germany and deal with the risk insurance issue.

Have the Liberals used the Canada account to do that? No, so their commitment to Ukraine is, like all other things, fairly superficial and not done with the seriousness one would expect from an ally of an important democratic country in this world and of our diaspora of 1.5 million Ukrainians in Canada who expect more from the government.

Enhancing Transparency and Accountability in the Transportation System Act

[Stephanie Kusie, Conservative, Calgary Midnapore, AB]

Madam Speaker, it is always a pleasure to rise in the House and speak on behalf of the incredible constituents of Calgary Midnapore.

Before I begin my speech, I would like to state that I will be splitting my time with the member for Provencher. I look forward to his remarks following mine.

When I received the request from our shadow minister for transport, the member for Chilliwack—Hope, I was, in fact, very honoured. One of my greatest achievements in my time in the House of Commons was serving as the shadow minister for transport during the pandemic. I can certainly tell everyone that things did not function as they should have during that time. They did not function at all, in fact.

My experience, based upon that time, leads me to the conclusion that there is, in regard to the government, lots of regulation and no responsibility. This also summarizes my conclusion regarding Bill C-52.

I think that this is a theme we have seen with the government. We have seen this with some recent decisions made at different levels of government, as well as at higher courts, including with regard to Bill C-69, the “no more pipelines” bill, as we called it here. There, they put in significant regulation against not only pipelines but also, actually, lots of other pieces of infrastructure. We see that this was, in fact, overturned.

Just this past week, as well, we were very happy to see, on this side of the House, the overruling of the single-use plastics legislation that was put in by the government. Again, the government imposes all this regulation on industry, on Canadians and on third parties without taking the responsibility for the regulations that it has imposed upon itself. I think we are seeing this again in this bill.

I am sure that we are aware that 2022 was a disastrous summer travel season, as well as a terrible holiday travel season through December. Really, if we look back at that, it was for the reason that I gave at the beginning of my speech, which was poor management of the transportation sector through the pandemic.

Frankly, they had no plan for the airline sector at that time. As the shadow minister of transport, I certainly tried to get them to produce a plan. They did no such thing. This had significant and widespread consequences not only for Canadians but also for workers across Canada, as well as for different communities and regions across Canada.

I implored them to come up with a plan for regional airlines at the time. Regional airport authorities were left to fend for themselves. I, along with my colleagues, made a very strong push for them to implement rapid testing and implement it sooner than they did, in an effort to more easily facilitate both travel and the travel sector. As well, I tried very hard to convince them not to use the supports for sectors for executive compensation. All these requests that I made as the shadow minister for transport fell upon deaf ears at that time.

In addition, of course, I was not alone in doing that. There were also my colleagues, the member of Parliament for Selkirk—Interlake—Eastman and the member of Parliament for Charleswood—St. James—Assiniboia—Headingley.

Sadly, in September 2020, we saw 14% of Nav Canada employees being laid off in centres in Winnipeg and Halifax. That is just another example of the lack of action of the government during the pandemic. At that time, 750 families had to go home and tell their families that they did not have a job anymore.

I said back in September 2020, before the throne speech, that our economy simply cannot function, let alone thrive, without major carriers and airport authorities. Ironically, I said that on mini-budget day, and here we are again today.

In 2020, the Calgary Airport Authority alone was expecting a 64% drop in passenger traffic from 2019 levels and projecting a loss of $245 million in revenue. Other airport authorities across the country were facing similar challenges at the time. Stakeholders also reported that some supply chains had been overloaded as a result of the pandemic, with demand for some products having increased by up to 500% and vulnerabilities having become apparent.

At that moment, I asked for the government to develop a plan with common-sense solutions. We continue to ask for such solutions today; again, they are not apparent in Bill C-52. Once again, we see a government that has lots of regulations, yet takes no responsibility.

I will turn my speech now to the point about complaints. Over the past year, the backlog of complaints with the CTA, the Canadian Transportation Agency, has grown to an average of 3,000 complaints per month, with a backlog of over 60,000 complaints now waiting to be adjudicated by the agency. In fact, the bill before us would set no service standards for the Canadian Transportation Agency and would do nothing to eliminate the backlog of 60,000 complaints. I have an example from my riding, where, as of July 2023, I had a constituent waiting two years for a response from the CTA to the complaint they had registered. In the same eight months when the CTA processed 4,085 complaints, the complaints grew by 12,000, doubling in that time. It is no wonder Canadians are dissatisfied with the current process in place, and the legislation would do little to improve it without said standards.

As well, it is not clear which entities would be covered by the bill as the bill would be left to future regulations. A theme we have heard on this side in discussing the bill today is there are lots of regulations. In fact, we have seen from the other side of the House that members take advantage of the regulations. They take advantage of Canadians in using these regulations. We might see something that is perhaps gazetted and then all of sudden brought into implementation, with both industry and Canadians being forced to respond and to pay the price for the use of regulation by the government.

Fundamentally, the bill remains a toothless bill that contains no specific remedies to the problems that have been plaguing the system since the pandemic. I will add that during the difficult time coming out of the pandemic, the then minister of transport blamed Canadians for forgetting how to travel. I talked about the government's shirking responsibility, and there we see it again with the minister of transport's not saying that it was his bad or that he should have come up with a plan during the pandemic, but rather blaming Canadians. He was not even addressing it through the complaint process, nor was he willing to fix the complaint process.

I have a quote from a significant air passenger rights advocate, Gabor Lukacs. Anyone who sits on the transport committee certainly will have communicated with him. He says, “There may be penalties, but even those powers are left to the government to create.” Since I am throwing out Gabor Lukacs's name, I would also like to mention Roy Grinshpan, who has also been an incredible advocate for passenger rights and passenger advocacy.

Even the pilots with whom I worked so closely during the pandemic are not in favour of the legislation. The president of ALPA Canada, Captain Tim Perry, for whom I have a lot of respect, brought to my attention that safety might be compromised as a result of the implementation of the bill to ensure that passengers are taken care of. This is simply another concern, which is that passengers are not being taken care of, and even the pilots who fly the planes are voicing their concern over this.

To conclude, I talked about the implementation of regulation, so much of it, but again there is no responsibility. The then minister of transport said that there would be consequences for service providers that do not meet the standards, but he did not disclose what they would be. Again, there is so much regulation and no responsibility. The government tells Canadians and industry time and time again that they have to do this and that, but it never takes responsibility for the legislation it implements.

In conclusion, Bill C-52 and the government are about lots of regulations but no responsibility.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

It is very clear why the minister is hiding and doesn't want to testify in front of this committee: On October 13, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the Liberals “no more pipelines” bill, Bill C-69, was unconstitutional. On October 26, Minister Guilbeault was forced to backtrack on his failed carbon tax. He finally admitted that it was unaffordable for Canadians. On November 7, the government's own environment commissioner stated that Minister Guilbeault is failing to meet the government's own emissions targets, and on November 14, the Federal Court ruled that Minister Guilbeault's plastic ban was unreasonable and unconstitutional.

No wonder he is hiding.

I expect the Liberals and the NDP will help cover up the minister's tracks again by stopping debate on my motion, but Conservatives do believe that Canadians do deserve answers from this minister.

Thank you, Chair.

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Thank you, Chair.

We now know, today, that he is not going to appear today after numerous calls from this committee to appear this week at committee to become accountable, so it is very clear that Minister Guilbeault is hiding from Canadians, and it's very clear why he's hiding from Canadians.

On October 13, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that the Liberals' “no more pipelines” bill, Bill C-69, was unconstitutional. On October 26, Minister Guilbeault was forced to backtrack on his failed carbon tax. He admitted that it was unaffordable for Canadians.

On November 7, the government's own environment commissioner stated that Minister Guilbeault is failing to meet the government's own emissions targets. On November 14, the Federal Court ruled that Minister Guilbeault's plastic ban was unreasonable and unconstitutional.

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

I think it's very relevant given that we are talking about the amendment that this Liberal government's policies such as the carbon tax and Bill C-69.... When we say "This Liberal government's policies" in the amendment, I think it encapsulates everything my friend and colleague is so eloquently talking about. Even inside the amendment it says that these kinds of policies are leading to greater division in our country. He's making a case for how divided Canada is after eight years of this Prime Minister. I think it's very relevant.

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

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'm delighted to be participating in this debate at the finance committee. It's very kind of you to have me. I recognize a face from the environment and sustainable development committee. Greetings to him, and I want to publicly invite him to go for a spin, should he feel so inclined. Thank you.

Mr. Chair, I want to address some concerns about this issue, because we're talking about respect for the Constitution, and also respect for the will of each and every province. I think it's quite important, when we live in a confederation—this is what Canada is all about—that we respect the fact that, yes, some provinces can have their own agenda.

We do indeed have the Canada pension plan, but we also have the Quebec pension plan, which has a long history. It was established in the mid-1960s, following frank, honest, effective and successful negotiations, setting Quebec apart from the rest of Canada. It doesn't mean that people are happier or less happy, but it does mean that people have taken full responsibility for their choices and decisions, and we know how that's turned out. Soon, the plan will have been around for 60 years, and things seem to be going well. The original motion refers to the committee recognizing, “the important contribution of the Quebec Pension Plan which was established independently at the same time as the Canada Pension Plan”. If things weren't going well, we would know, but they are, so that's good.

From our standpoint, it's important to respect the will of the provinces in certain areas of jurisdiction. That means having frank, constructive and fruitful discussions to create a win-win situation for Canadians. All of us here want to make everyday life better for Canadians. No one is here to create problems. We have opposing views on how to go about it, which, of course, is the whole basis of politics. We have differing views, but when ideas clash, good things come. That's how it should be, and we need to respect that.

These last eight years, we have seen this government's insatiable appetite to encroach on provincial jurisdiction. We saw examples of that recently in Supreme Court and other rulings on the federal government's ambitions in environmental matters. It's not for nothing that I brought this up earlier. I am on the environment and sustainable development committee. I am the official opposition's critic for the environment and climate change, so I am particularly attuned to the issue. This case sets the example. We can do things the right way, and we can respect one another's decisions and areas of jurisdiction. However, that wasn't the case when it came to the environment, in many respects.

I can hear my fellow members rushing to point out that the Supreme Court gave the federal government the right to legislate in relation to carbon pricing. The challenge to the Liberals' carbon tax went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ruled that the government had the authority to implement the tax. Just because the Supreme Court says you can do something doesn't mean you should. What happened next? The government's approach clearly did not have the intended result.

Need I remind my fellow members that, after eight years of this Liberal government lecturing the entire planet, Canada was ranked 58th out of 63 countries for its efforts to tackle climate change? That is a far cry from the Liberal rhetoric, which is all about preaching endlessly. That score did not come from the official opposition, the Conservatives, or some institute. It came from the UN, which nearly a year ago, ranked Canada 58th out of 63 countries, following eight years of Liberal rule. Clearly, the Liberals' policy is not having the intended results.

The reason I bring it up is Bill C‑69, which a number of provinces took issue with, including Quebec. It contains provisions that are almost insulting to the collective memory of Quebeckers, with the federal government giving itself somewhat of a veto power over Quebec's hydroelectric projects.

Whenever I talk about it, I feel as though I'm divulging a secret that has unfortunately been kept for far too long. People are shocked when they find out. They wonder, “What's this all about?” Rivers are the site of hydroelectric projects, and rivers are under provincial—not federal—jurisdiction. What, then, is this power the federal government has given itself?

Section 7 of the Act created under Bill C‑69 contains very specific provisions that allow the environment minister to subject major hydroelectricity projects to environmental assessments, should he be so inclined. Those projects are none of his business, though.

Quebec is quite fortunate to have everything it needs, geographically speaking, to unlock enormous green energy potential through hydroelectricity. We are obviously very happy about that. Shortly, I will go over some of the landmark moments culminating in Quebec's energy self-sufficiency and talk about how people in the forties and fifties had the vision needed to turn Quebec into a hydroelectricity powerhouse. That can be said of the seventies as well. We saw that same vision come to fruition recently, when the current premier inaugurated the Romaine hydroelectric complex, alongside the Honourable Jean Charest, Quebec's premier from 2003 to 2012 and the person who green-lit the project.

Through Bill C‑69, the federal government gave itself the power to subject hydroelectric projects to federal environmental assessments.

Let me say this. Like an adult, Quebec carries out its own environmental assessments, and the system works. Of course, people will remember how certain assessments were carried out hurriedly. Everyone in Quebec obviously remembers when the Parti Québécois government unfortunately bypassed the environmental review process for the most polluting project in Quebec's history, the McInnis cement plant in Gaspé. The then environment minister gave the go‑ahead to the most polluting project in history.

That was a sad day, indeed. Need I point out who the environment minister at the time was? No other than the current member for Chambly, the leader of the Bloc Québécois. Dear friends, now when you hear the leader of the Bloc Québécois preaching about the environment to everyone who doesn't think like he does, remind him that he was the most polluting environment minister in Quebec's history.

All that to say, Quebec is capable of carrying out its own environmental assessments of hydroelectric projects. Why, then, did the federal government empower itself to redo what Quebec has already done? Going through the process a second time is absolutely pointless. It goes much further than that. As far as we're concerned, the environmental experts who analyze—

Canada-Ukraine Free Trade Agreement Implementation Act, 2023

[Dan Mazier, Conservative, Dauphin—Swan River—Neepawa, MB]

Madam Speaker, Bill C-69 is basically what the member was referring to. That is the “no more pipelines” bill that was imposed here in Canada on Canadian citizens.

As we look forward and work with Ukraine in developing their energy infrastructure, we need to take a very long look at what the Liberals have done for legislation on developing energy in our own country. We should be helping them instead of hindering Ukraine in moving forward with energy development.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Yes, exactly.

I think it's important to note that this Liberal government has continued to put forward policies that divide our great country. Whether it be the carbon tax that I've talked about and will continue to talk about, Bill C-69, which is referred to as the “no more pipelines” bill, or Bill C-48.

Abraham Lincoln famously said that a house divided cannot stand. We need to have a country that is working together. We need from every corner, from Nova Scotia to British Columbia, everyone rowing in the same direction and working together to make this the great country that we know it should and can be.

When we look across our country, we see individuals increasingly feeling as though they are being left out by this government, whether you are a logger in British Columbia or you're working in the oil fields in Alberta.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Peterborough South, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I think it actually is self-evident that the carbon tax is affecting farmers, and agriculture is a big part of the economy. If this member is saying somehow that agriculture is not part of the Canadian economy, I wish he would just come out and say that, because my farmers certainly feel differently than that.

Perhaps, Mr. Chair, I might speculate that maybe their lack of respect for farmers is leading to the extreme food insecurity that millions of Canadians are facing right now. I firmly disagree with the member that agriculture is not.... I believe agriculture is part of the economy, and I'm going to continue to talk about it. It says it right here—“a pillar of Canada's economy”—so I'll continue to talk about it.

Talking about agriculture this year, the testimony we heard to this very finance committee in Winnipeg, from agriculture groups and farmers themselves, was no doubt.... They agreed that probably the best solution is not any more carve-outs, but to cancel the carbon tax once and for all. When you think about it, is there any other button this government could hit that would reduce inflation by 16% tomorrow, and from being 33% above target? What other policy lever would be that effective in fighting inflation? Honestly, I mean this. When I no longer have the floor, what's their answer to reducing inflation? I have a policy right now that will reduce the rate of inflation by 16% and 33%.

Although I agree with most of Mr. Macklem's testimony on the impact of carbon tax on inflation, it should be pointed out that he just talked about the direct impact, and he was only talking about fuel. That's not even the full impact on inflation; it's actually just part of it. The other thing he said.... I know members across the aisle, whom I respect, have said, “Well, yes, Phil, but it's only for one year”—and it's true that he did say that. But the reality is the carbon tax is set to increase all the way to 2030, to 170 tonnes, which means it will have an impact on inflation every year until 2030. So, it doesn't stop this year. The impact on inflation will continue to go forward, because when you cancel the carbon tax, you eliminate not only the carbon tax now, but the future increases as well. That's a question I'm looking forward to putting to Governor Macklem going forward, because it is clear, basic logic on that.

When you look at the overall divisive policies of this government and the carbon tax carve-out, what you see is that the carbon tax is getting more and more holes in it. In fact, it's almost untenable going forward, because you have the heating oil exemption; you'll have the farmer exemption, hopefully, soon; and then there are other exemptions that are not in there, which I don't understand quite why. No one has been affected by the affordability crisis more than persons with disabilities. Why should there not be a carbon tax exemption for persons with disabilities?

On that, despite the fact that we're 1,000 days from the introduction of legislation with respect to the Canada disability benefit, and it's been over one year since the enabling legislation, we still don't have it funded. This government has to be fair to persons with disabilities, and we heard great testimony on that, with respect. We are now “double punishing” persons with disabilities, who unfortunately, and to the great criticism of our society, are often at the lowest quintile of economic performance. This is not a reflection on them; it's a reflection on us as politicians.

I'm hoping that the fall economic statement finally funds this benefit, which I believe had unanimous support in the House of Commons. But now, in addition to that, we're going to charge individuals a carbon tax, which is very difficult.

Canadians who are most economically vulnerable in general are often hurt disproportionately by regressive taxes like the GST and the carbon tax. I had the opportunity to talk to a poverty advocate. He said that, in his experience, only 4% of those who are most financially vulnerable, those at the bottom of the economic spectrum, file their income taxes. For those individuals making an income of over $20,000 to $25,000, they are paying taxes, and it's a net economic loss. For those unfortunately not reaching that threshold, or even sometimes higher, they are in receipt of net benefits.

For example, if individuals who have had difficult economic times, for whatever reason, do not file their income tax returns, which according to that poverty advocate is 96% of them, they don't get the carbon tax rebate. However, the reality is, on the meagre earnings they carve out—and I'm sure they are doing their best to make more but for whatever reason, obstacles and barriers are in their way that I'm sure are beyond their control—they have to pay carbon tax. If they are paying rent, they are either paying it directly or paying it indirectly through heating costs. They are probably using some type of transportation that likely requires some type of fossil fuel, and once again, they are paying for that in dollars.

We had further testimony from the City of London as well, and they talked about how difficult it was. That, Mr. Chair, was some of the more startling testimony about the number of individuals who lost their lives on the city streets in London. It was deeply moving for myself and, I'm sure, for the other members. They agreed that one thing we could do as parliamentarians would be to reduce the cost of heating. Many of the organizations that provide solace, or care, or respite to individuals who find themselves unhomed have to pay the carbon tax. That is at the cost of providing more benefits to individuals who are in the most difficult circumstances we could imagine. Instead of buying extra winter coats, they are having to pay for the carbon tax.

It's incredibly difficult for me to understand why a government that has mired our country in a housing crisis, where mortgages are up two or three times, where rent is up two times, and that's if you can find a place.... In some communities in my riding, like Cobourg and Port Hope, they are facing vacancy rates of less than 1%, so even if you have the $2,000 or $2,500 a month to pay for housing, it just doesn't exist. I just cannot understand why the government continues to go in the direction of making life more difficult.

Quite frankly, the root of a lot of those issues is our productivity crisis. Canada, unfortunately, is ranked near the bottom of the OECD with respect to productivity. I hope, in the fall economic statement, they are looking through a lens of productivity. If I were advising the Minister of Finance—maybe she's listening, but I don't know—I would put every single economic policy through a productivity lens. In some cases, there might be things that outrank productivity, but, for everything this government does, they should look at the productivity of it, because even inflation is affected by productivity.

Of course, we've heard a lot from the Governor of the Bank of Canada Tiff Macklem, who talked about inflation and the effect of demand on inflation. However, there are two sides to it. There are two sides to the ledger. There's both demand and supply. What the Governor of the Bank of Canada is attempting to do is reduce demand. He's trying to get fewer dollars chasing goods. He's doing that mainly by talking about monetary policy, reducing the money supply and increasing interest rates. That reduces the money. He's even, unprecedentedly.... I have to admit, I was a little taken aback at the finance committee that he was so forthright. Good on him for calling for the federal government, which was spending at a growth rate of 3.5%, to bring it down to under 2%. Otherwise, it would be at cross-purposes or unhelpful to his efforts.

There's the other side. There's the demand side. Slowing demand is painful. Slowing demand increases interest rates, which makes mortgages more expensive. It also causes unemployment and puts you on that path towards recession and maybe even “stagflation”.

Now, there's another way. There's another side of the ledger. We call that “supply”. The study of that is called “supply-side economics”. If we can increase the number of goods, society becomes more prosperous. It doesn't come with the pain that reducing demand does. In fact, it's the exact opposite. If you increase supply, you increase economic opportunities for everyone. You increase prosperity. You increase the wealth of the nation. You increase the size of the pie. What I firmly believe this government needs to do, not just to combat inflation now....

We could be in for, as Tiff Macklem and other economists have commented, structural high inflation, meaning we're simply not producing enough goods to meet the demand we have, especially with the large population growth we have. Rather than tamping down demand by saying, “Canadians need to do with less and be happy about it”—which seems to be the calling words of the other side—I believe Canadians can produce more, make more and be more prosperous.

When we increase economic growth—it's been proven over and over again, from JFK to Brian Mulroney—we help the most vulnerable. It's when we get that economic squeeze in supply.... It's not the wealthy in our society. It's not the millionaires who suffer. They'll be just fine. When you're making a million bucks a year and lose 10% of your income, it's probably not a good time. I've never earned a million dollars, but it's probably not a good time. However, if you're making $10,000 a year and lose 10% of your income, you're probably not going to eat some days. It's the most vulnerable who get crushed.

Actually, once again, Governor Macklem came out and pretty much said this. Governor Macklem called inflation “a tax that disproportionately affects the most vulnerable members of society." Once again, I was surprised by Governor Macklem's candour on the topic. I look forward to having him back here again so he can amplify these comments, because inflation is an incredibly corrosive force on our economy. It waters down the wealth of Canadians.

I understand that the governor has to do what he has to do right now to reduce inflation, which is increase interest rates. His job is going to be made harder, meaning he'll have to increase interest rates more if this government can't get their spending under control. In fact, Scotiabank said, in a recent report, that actually a full $700 of the average mortgage is the direct result of this government's profligate spending. In that same report, I believe, they said that investment in housing is down 14%, meaning that we don't have more houses coming online.

We are welcoming newcomers, which is fantastic and great, but we owe it to them as well as to individuals who were born in Canada, to enable them to afford housing. If we can't deliver the housing for newcomers and all Canadians, that's devastating. Not being able to afford a house isn't just that you don't get a lawn; oftentimes people choose not to have families at that point because they just don't have any place to put their children. We are causing all sorts of social and economic pain by not having the appropriate housing plan in place.

Our leader Pierre Poilievre has come up with a common-sense housing plan to reduce taxes, to reduce red tape and to incentivize municipalities to get more housing starts out the door, but right now we're going the wrong way. In fact, in testimony before this very finance committee, the CMHC said that, no, the current policies will not bridge the housing gap, which means we have another nail in the structural inflation coffin.

Our productivity issues are reducing our supply of pretty much everything and now we have housing.... We are unable to increase the number of houses that we need, which would increase housing going forward.

Then on top of that, we're also limiting the ability to make use of our own natural resources. Of course, a large portion of inflation in CPI is actually fuels, such as gasoline, diesel. Because we are limiting our ability to be self-sufficient—even though we have clean, great Canadian natural gas, Canadian energy—the impact of that is we will be increasingly dependent on other countries, meaning we will be dependent on world markets with respect to future fuel prices, which will leave us exposed to a shock in energy prices. This government, in many ways, is creating the perfect storm for structural high inflation.

We need to have a common-sense plan to get this economy back on the rails. Our leader has said very clearly that CPP is something that we believe should continue to be national in scope—with, of course, the noted exemption of Quebec. We would encourage Albertans and Alberta to stay in CPP, but we do have trouble with the language, particularly the third line of Ms. Bendayan's third line in there, third paragraph.

I would like to move an amendment at this point to delete that and replace it with the following, “The Liberal government's policies such as the carbon tax and Bill C-69 are lead to greater division in our country.”