Bill C-5

One Canadian Economy Act

An Act to enact the Free Trade and Labour Mobility in Canada Act and the Building Canada Act

Part 1 enacts the Free Trade and Labour Mobility in Canada Act , which establishes a statutory framework to remove federal barriers to the interprovincial trade of goods and services and to improve labour mobility within Canada. In the case of goods and services, that Act provides that a good or service that meets provincial or territorial requirements is considered to meet comparable federal requirements that pertain to the interprovincial movement of the good or provision of the service. In the case of workers, it provides for the recognition of provincial and territorial authorizations to practise occupations and for the issuance of comparable federal authorizations to holders of such provincial and territorial authorizations. It also provides the Governor in Council with the power to make regulations respecting federal barriers to the interprovincial movement of goods and provision of services and to the movement of labour within Canada.
Part 2 enacts the Building Canada Act , which, among other things,
(a) authorizes the Governor in Council to add the name of a project and a brief description of it to a schedule to that Act if the Governor in Council is of the opinion, having regard to certain factors, that the project is in the national interest;
(b) provides that determinations and findings that have to be made and opinions that have to be formed under certain Acts of Parliament and regulations for an authorization to be granted in respect of a project that is named in Schedule 1 to that Act are deemed to have been made or formed, as the case may be, in favour of permitting the project to be carried out in whole or in part;
(c) requires the minister who is designated under that Act to issue to the proponent of a project, if certain conditions are met, a document that sets out conditions that apply in respect of the project and that is deemed to be the authorizations, required under certain Acts of Parliament and regulations, that are specified in the document; and
(d) requires that minister, each year, to cause an independent review to be conducted of the status of each national interest project.

One Canadian Economy Act

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Liberals rejected those amendments.

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

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

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

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

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

[The Deputy Speaker, Tom Kmiec]

Questions and comments, the hon. parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.

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

Mr. Speaker, as I emphasized during my comments, we have a new Prime Minister, who brought all the first ministers together, and they had very successful discussions. We had individuals like Doug Ford, a progressive Conservative in Ontario, working along with Wab Kinew, a New Democrat from Manitoba: different premiers, different political parties, working with a Liberal national government, building a team Canada approach to building a stronger and healthier country. I am grateful that the Conservatives saw the light to support Bill C-5. We appreciate that.

I am wondering if the member can provide her thoughts in regard to having a team Canada approach to building these projects, which include the stakeholders and beyond: indigenous concerns, premiers' concerns and many others.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, Conservatives will not stand in the way of the Liberals' sudden and often diametrically opposed to the tenures of their own words and actions efforts to get Canada working and building, as Conservatives have called on them to do the entire time. We are hopeful, but we do remain skeptical that Bill C-5 can fully solve the problem of the current broken federal regulatory mess that the Liberals made.

We believe in reconciliaction and know that indigenous people want to pursue equity, ownership and more powers of development and self-determination with their own rights and title. That is why the government should heed the words of the various chiefs who participated and of the AFN national chief, who cautioned that because of the lack of clarity around the duty to consult in Bill C-5, which Conservatives tried to fix, all approvals out of this may face court challenges, which will delay building. The Liberals need to fix that.

[Sébastien Lemire, Bloc, Abitibi—Témiscamingue, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member for Lakeland a question. First, we can all agree that supporting a closure motion is absolutely stupid and unreasonable. We can also agree that, in terms of the environment, the Conservatives are once again lagging behind.

I would, however, like to point out a way in which the member was able to play an important role at report stage. The Indian Act was removed from schedule 2, so the government can no longer override the act or remove fundamental rights. We can agree that we are not talking about free, prior and informed consent, and we would have liked Bill C‑5 to address that, which it does not. An important step was made in committee, however, and indigenous stakeholders themselves have recognized it. I want to thank my colleague and the Conservatives for their co-operation on this.

What does my colleague think of the fact that the Liberals did not vote for this amendment?

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I think it betrays the lie the Liberals have been peddling for 10 years, which is that the most important relationship to them is with indigenous people. They have a track record of killing major research projects and pipelines that indigenous people worked years and years to negotiate in a good way with big companies to secure their own source revenue for self-sufficiency and self-reliance. There are big questions about how on earth the Liberals could try to bring in this law that exempted 16 different acts and six different policies, including the Indian Act.

I appreciate my colleague's comments and thank him for his collaboration. This is the major issue that the Liberals must get right; otherwise, they risk and threaten getting to yes in a good way, which every single Canadian and indigenous person in this country deserves.

[Todd Doherty, Conservative, Cariboo—Prince George, BC]

Mr. Speaker, this is a little bit out of the scope of my colleague's file, but the Liberals really missed a key opportunity with this piece of legislation. Over seven million Canadians are without a primary care physician. We are in a mental health crisis within our country, and they could have very easily included provisions for a blue seal program within this bill.

I would like to hear our hon. colleague's comments.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, this is part of the concern we have with the government bringing forward a bill where it is trying to fix the mess that it made itself.

Maybe I will just take this opportunity to acknowledge my colleague for all of his passionate, dedicated, steadfast advocacy for health, mental health and wellness for men and all Canadians and congratulate him on the successful passage of the 988 line, which is a lifeline for vulnerable and at-risk Canadians. Congratulations to him. We are so proud to have him on our team.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-5, An Act to enact the Free Trade and Labour Mobility in Canada Act and the Building Canada Act, as reported (with amendments) from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Mr. Speaker, today is the last day we will sit before summer. Usually, on the last day, everyone has a smile on their face. They are in a good mood and they are patting themselves on the back. I would suggest that such is not really the case today. That is not the case because we are finishing our work with a gag order on Bill C-5, a gag order that, incidentally, does not have consensus. We barely had time to study the bill in committee or in the House. In fact, the gag order came in before we even started debate on Bill C‑5.

Normally, when a committee study is completed and there has been some co-operation between the parties, enough amendments have been made to the bill to make it decent, or at least palatable and something we can live with. Generally, the priority is to remove most of the irritants from the bill, and we are able to say that we have at least done that. This time, that is not the case. This time, we are not in a good mood about the bill or about the work done in committee, because we did not have an opportunity to do any real work.

It is particularly sad because closure is generally imposed when a bill has stagnated, when there has been no progress on a bill for months, when there is filibustering. This time, we did not even have time for it to stagnate. There was no time for a filibuster because we did not have time to talk about the bill in the first place. It is sad because not so long ago, we moved an amendment to the government's closure motion that would have granted us more hours of consideration in committee. Instead of having just two hours on Tuesday, we would have had 14 hours, which would have enabled a good number of witnesses to appear. We almost reached an agreement before going to committee. It seemed as if it was going to go ahead, but apparently there were last-minute negotiations behind the scenes, some shenanigans between the government and the Conservatives. As a result of those shenanigans, that did not come to pass, and people who had been called to testify were told by the clerk that they would not be testifying after all. Those are witnesses who had taken time off work, had planned to drive for hours or had already started driving, and could have even boarded a plane. Those witnesses were ultimately told they were not going to testify. What do you make of that, Mr. Speaker? I know you cannot answer, but it makes no sense. It was a lousy way to treat these people. They were treated without respect.

A lot of witnesses, including members of environmental groups, would have appreciated the opportunity to testify about Bill C‑5. However, no witnesses from environmental groups were able to give evidence on Bill C‑5 because the Bloc Québécois was allowed only two witnesses for the duration of the study. That is absolutely ridiculous. More than 60% of the witnesses, whose names we submitted and who were supposed to testify, were ultimately told they could not, even though the clerk had already called to ask them to testify. The whole thing is unbelievable. I consider this a terrible disservice to democracy. It brings shame on this Parliament to have sunk so low. What this government was actually trying to do was to muzzle them. It wanted to deny them a voice. It wanted to silence them and silence their criticism. That is how this government operates.

Worse still, by the time the witnesses appeared in committee, it was too late for us to move amendments. Regardless of what the witnesses had to say, we could not even listen to them or integrate their comments into the bill. That way of doing things makes no sense whatsoever. It is a disgrace, and I hope Quebec society will remember this. I actually hope Canadian society will remember it, too. I know first nations will remember, environmental groups will remember and francophone communities outside Quebec will remember. I know a lot of Quebeckers and unions will remember, too.

When a government seizes all power for itself, disregards the democratic process and refuses to listen to criticism, that is a serious and dangerous situation. It is bad enough that the Conservatives helped them do it, but it is worse still that the Liberals did not vote in favour of one single amendment proposed in committee. They could not have cared less. Like masters, like kings on earth, they had already made all the decisions. That is how this government operates.

The House resumed consideration of Bill C-5, An Act to enact the Free Trade and Labour Mobility in Canada Act and the Building Canada Act, as reported with amendment from the committee, and of the motions in Group No. 1.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Mr. Speaker, as I was saying earlier, I have been in the House for about nine years now, and I have to say, Bill C‑5 is the worst bill I have ever worked on. It is the worst bill I have ever seen make its way through the House. These are strong words, but it is the truth.

The government's approach reveals a thoroughly autocratic management style. Despite everything, we managed to get rid of a few irritants, a few items that were blatantly unacceptable, although many others remain. In fact, we had to twist the government's arm to get last-minute gains like having the Indian Act and the Official Languages Act removed from the list of acts that could be sidestepped under the major projects bill.

It should not be a herculean task to prevent the government from bypassing every law on the books to please the Liberal Party's pals. Some laws should be untouchable. Francophone rights should not even be up for discussion; nor should indigenous rights. We won those small victories because we got a little last-minute support on a few things from the Conservative Party.

We also managed to achieve a little more transparency around the use and application of this act thanks to an oversight committee similar to the one we have for emergency measures. We also made sure that the special powers given to ministers cannot be used when Parliament is dissolved or the House is adjourned. These are small victories, but they do not change the substance of the bill.

We also proposed other amendments that sought to improve environmental oversight, but they were rejected by the Liberal-Conservative coalition, as were our amendments aimed at giving Quebec the right to say no to projects that Ottawa wants to fast-track. We proposed amendments to force the bill and the government to respect the jurisdictions of Quebec and the other provinces and territories, but those amendments were also rejected by the Liberal-Conservative coalition.

We introduced an amendment to stop certain projects from being fast-tracked and to give the House the power to do that. This amendment would have allowed the House to draw attention to the fact that the government was going too far when it was not happy with these fast-tracked projects. Once again, our amendment was rejected by the Liberal-Conservative coalition. We wanted to completely eliminate the power to circumvent laws by order in council for major projects. That was also challenged and rejected by the Liberal-Conservative coalition.

As we know, normally, the larger the project, the greater its impact and the more social dialogue it requires. However, in this case, we are seeing the opposite: The larger the project, the more political games there will be. The larger the project, the more people will have to suffer the consequences of something that they were not even consulted about.

This opens the door to all sorts of biased applications, all sorts of arbitrary decisions and greater cronyism. One would think we are living in a banana republic. Usually, in modern democracies, it is the opposite. We have the executive branch, the legislative branch and the judicial branch, which are all independent from one another. However, what we are seeing here is the executive branch giving itself the power to bypass the legislative branch. That is unfortunate and it is really problematic to see the government being given the power to choose projects, the power to choose what projects should be designated as being in the national interest, the power to choose the conditions that will apply to projects, and the power to circumvent laws that this Parliament passed, all by order in council. The government is even being given the power to issue an order changing the project conditions midstream, if the developers do not like them.

The bill that is before us is really serious, and I do not understand why members of the House do not realize that. Normally, checks and balances exist in a society for good reason: to prevent the abuse of power. What we are seeing on the other side of the House is a government that wants to give itself all the power and govern like our neighbours south of the border. We are speaking out against that. I thought that this was something that we wanted to do away with in the last election, but this is what we are seeing the government do today.

We should not trust a government that not only wants to govern by order in council, but also wants to govern in secret, with no accountability.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is disappointing, the degree to which the Bloc does not support Bill C-5. Every region of the country will benefit from it. The Bloc members seem to be concerned about the process, when we know it is not just the Liberals; we have Conservatives and Liberals who have recognized the theme of the national election that was held on April 28. It was universally accepted in terms of developing and promoting one Canadian economy, because it helps the people of Quebec. We can think in terms of hydro in the province of Quebec.

Why is the Bloc putting their separatist attitudes above the interests of the people of Quebec when, even in the most recent mandate, April 28, just weeks ago, we got that very strong message? The Bloc members are ignoring the people of Quebec. I say shame on them.

[Xavier Barsalou-Duval, Bloc, Pierre-Boucher—Les Patriotes—Verchères, QC]

Mr. Speaker, when the parliamentary secretary's only argument against what I said is that I am a separatist, that means he is all out of arguments.

[Philip Lawrence, Conservative, Northumberland—Clarke, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member is correct that the bill does provide the government with discretion to approve projects. I guess where the Conservatives and the Bloc separate is the fact that the Bloc members voted for Bill C-69. They supported the industrial carbon tax. This is the very reason Bill C-5 is necessary.

Will the member vote with Conservatives to eliminate Bill C-69?