Bill C-49

An Act to amend the Canada—Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation Act and the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Resources Accord Implementation Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts

This enactment amends the Canada–Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation Act and the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Resources Accord Implementation Act to, among other things,
(a) change their titles to the Canada–Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation and Offshore Renewable Energy Management Act and the Canada–Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Resources Accord Implementation and Offshore Renewable Energy Management Act , respectively;
(b) change the names of the Canada–Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board and the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board to the Canada–Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Energy Regulator and the Canada–Nova Scotia Offshore Energy Regulator, respectively (“the Regulators”);
(c) establish the Regulators as the regulating bodies for offshore renewable energy projects;
(d) establish a land tenure regime for the issuance of submerged land licences to carry out offshore renewable energy projects, as well as the revenues regime associated with those licences and projects;
(e) establish a ministerial decision-making process respecting the issuance of submerged land licences and the Regulators’ exercise of certain powers or performance of certain duties;
(f) expand the application of the safety and environmental protection regime and its enforcement powers to include offshore renewable energy projects;
(g) provide that the Governor in Council may make regulations to prohibit the commencement or continuation of petroleum resource or renewable energy activities, or the issuance of interests, in respect of any portion of the offshore area that is located in an area that has been or may be identified as an area for environmental or wildlife conservation or protection;
(h) authorize negotiations for the surrender of an interest, the cancellation of an interest if negotiations fail and the granting of compensation to an interest owner for the surrender or cancellation;
(i) establish the regulatory and liability regime for abandoned facilities relating to petroleum-related works or activities or offshore renewable energy projects;
(j) expand the application of the occupational health and safety regime to offshore renewable energy projects;
(k) allow the federal or provincial governments to unilaterally fund certain expenses incurred by the Regulators as a result of specific requests made by that government;
(l) allow new methods to demonstrate the existence of significant hydrocarbon accumulations in a geological feature and limit the duration of future significant discovery licences to 25 years;
(m) provide that the Governor in Council may make regulations to regulate access to offshore infrastructure, including to enforce tolls and tariffs;
(n) establish a new transboundary hydrocarbon management regime to regulate fields or pools that straddle domestic and international administrative boundaries, enabling the implementation of the Canada-France transboundary fields agreement;
(o) remove references to the former Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012 and, to align with the Impact Assessment Act , clarify the role of the Federal and Provincial Ministers and Regulators with respect to the conduct of impact assessments of designated projects as well as regional and strategic assessments; and
(p) specify that the Crown may rely on the Regulators for the purposes of consulting with the Indigenous peoples of Canada and that the Regulators may accommodate adverse impacts to existing Aboriginal and treaty rights recognized and affirmed by section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982 .
Finally, it makes consequential and terminological amendments to other Acts.

Canada-Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation Act

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Calgary Rocky Ridge understands what the oil industry did in the city of Calgary, what it could do and how it was devastated by these Liberal policies. Can he imagine what this kind of policy would stop from happening in the Atlantic region? It has possibilities, but what does he really think would happen, as he may have seen what the Liberal government did to the industry in Alberta, particularly Calgary?

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

Mr. Speaker, the impact was instantaneous when the government came to power. Some 200,000 energy workers across Canada, not all in Calgary, but many thousands in Calgary, including in my own riding, lost their jobs in the early months of the government. While things are much better now, the environment is still not there for investment. Money is leaving Calgary, not coming into it, from what some of the finance community has told me. I can only imagine what the bill might do to Newfoundland and Labrador and to Nova Scotia.

It is the uncertainty that is such a killer. If we do not know what the bill is going to do, nobody is going to invest in any project. Even the existing fishing industry does not know how it may or may not be affected. That leads to decisions that have to be made on capital allocation, and it will not be for Canada.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for the important points he made about the energy sector, about the value it produces for our economy and about the failures of the government. I wonder if he can expand specifically on just what the bill would do, the additional challenges it would create and what kind of an approach we should be taking instead.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is really all about certainty for investors. If it is going to take potentially years to get a decision, and if a full offshore development and production designated project review can take 1,600 days, people are not going to apply. The uncertainty has been there from the moment the Liberals tabled the bill. They should make a clear declaration that they are not going to proceed down this road of potential unconstitutional jurisdictional intrusion by adding more red tape. They should go with an entirely different approach and start again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[The Deputy Speaker, Chris d'Entremont]

Could the hon. member for Langley—Aldergrove just back up and not use the name of the Prime Minister?

The hon. member.

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

Mr. Speaker, thank you for pointing that out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Speaker, in my remarks, I actually did not have time to talk about the important role that Canada could play in exporting our natural resources for energy.

The member touched on it a little. However, with some extra time, could he explain further about just why it is so important that Canada be a global supplier of reliable, clean and affordable energy for people throughout the world?

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

Mr. Speaker, Canada is rich in natural resources. Any country in the world that is rich in natural resources develops them for the benefit of their citizens.

We are a trading nation, and we have a lot of allies that want to purchase our resources. Again, I am thinking of liquid natural gas as one example of that. These are the sorts of things that we should be doing for our own benefit, as well as for the benefit of our friends and trading partners.

I could talk about other natural resources as well, but I will leave room for some other questions.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for his excellent speech. We have heard many excellent speeches from Conservative colleagues tonight about the importance of the energy sector, jobs and opportunity.

After nine years of the Liberal government, it is clear that its policies are not working, and it is not worth the cost, the crime or the corruption. We will get to that, but in the context of the bill, certainly, it is not worth the cost.

However, the good news is that, after nine years, there is hope on the horizon. Canadians know that it was not this way before the extreme NDP-Liberal coalition took power, and it will not be that way once we have a restoration of common-sense leadership in this country.

Could the member share a little more about the promise associated with a restoration of common-sense leadership in this country and how his constituents are reacting to that?

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

Mr. Speaker, that was a great question. I am sure the member is hearing from his constituents; likewise, I am hearing from my constituents that they are eager to have a federal carbon tax election.

We have seen in some of the recent by-elections that this is resonating with Canadians from coast to coast to coast. It is certainly true in my region.

I talked about productivity and efficiency. One factor, any economist would tell us, is to have a competitive tax regime. Canada has a carbon tax, which has proven not to be effective at all in reducing carbon emissions and is just making our economy less efficient.

I say bring it on. We are ready for a carbon tax election. I would ask that the other opposition parties please vote with us. They should do what they are supposed to do and oppose the budget. Let us force a carbon tax election.

The House resumed from May 27 consideration of the motion that Bill C-49, An Act to amend the Canada—Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation Act and the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Resources Accord Implementation Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be read the third time and passed, and of the amendment.

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Madam Speaker, it is disappointing that the Conservatives would not recognize the opportunities that they are denying Atlantic Canada. We know that we are talking about the generation of potentially billions of dollars of future investment. We have Conservatives, in particular Conservative members of Parliament from Atlantic Canada, denying that we have premiers in Atlantic Canada, a Progressive Conservative premier and a Liberal premier, who are waiting for this legislation to pass, and then they pass mirroring legislation.

Why is the Conservative Party of Canada today denying Atlantic Canada the opportunities that this legislation would provide?

[Kelly McCauley, Conservative, Edmonton West, AB]

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

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