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

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, this is my first speech in the House this Parliament, and I would like to take some time to thank the constituents of Edmonton Strathcona for putting their trust in me again. I would also like to thank my incredible team, both in Edmonton and in Ottawa, for all the work they do to help me.

Of course, it would not be a maiden speech if I did not take a moment to thank my dear husband, Duncan, and my two children, Maclean and Keltie, for their support.

Tonight we are discussing the way that Bill C-5 is being pushed through Parliament, and I have to start by saying that Canadians are not short on ambition. Canadians want big, ambitious projects. We want nation-building projects that create good unionized jobs. We want to create secure futures for our families and for our communities, and we want to create infrastructure that meets the needs of the 21st century. We want that; that is clear. That is not up for debate in the House this evening.

In fact, I support the objectives of Bill C-5. The problem I have is that Canadians require a government that can actually deliver. We all want a government that has ambition and has big ideas, but we need a government that can deliver. The way that Bill C-5 has been drafted and the ham-fisted way the government is pushing it through mean that I have a lot of doubt that these projects will get built.

Today I rise to speak out against the way the Liberal government is attempting to ram through Bill C-5. This piece of legislation is not just flawed, but has dangerous overreach that threatens the democratic principles that underlie this House and, in fact, this country.

Let me be very clear. I support the idea of transformative investment. I support creating good unionized jobs. I support building infrastructure that will serve generations to come. However, we cannot and we must not trade away workers' protections, transparency, accountability, environmental protections and indigenous rights in the name of expediency. That is what this bill does. It is an attempt to push forward a nation-building agenda without democracy. That is a problem.

Let us look at what this bill does.

Bill C-5 has two parts, and the first part I have a lot of support for. This piece of legislation would make it easier for workers to work around this country. It would make it easier for us to have one Canadian economy, not 13 economies. It would help. There is potential for it to have some very good outcomes for workers. Of course, as parliamentarians, we have an obligation to do our due diligence to look at this legislation and ensure it is strong.

It is the second part of the legislation that I have really big problems with. It would expand federal authority over how major infrastructure projects are approved. It would centralize power in the hands of a few cabinet ministers, giving them sweeping discretion to decide which projects are strategic or urgent and therefore exempt from the usual federal processes: environmental reviews, consultation requirements, public debates, etc. This means that ministers, not Parliament, not indigenous groups and not Canadians, would decide what gets built.

I am from Alberta and I have seen what happens when decisions about lands and resources are made behind closed doors. I have seen what it looks like when economic development ignores environmental costs. Right now, Albertans are rightly furious with their provincial Conservative government, which has opened up coal mining in the eastern slopes of the Rocky Mountains once again. I have seen time and time again how indigenous communities are left out of decisions that directly impact their lives and futures. When I see legislation like Bill C-5, which strips away the few checks and safeguards we have, I cannot remain quiet.

This is not just about the Liberal government. Let us imagine a different government, perhaps a Conservative government with Pierre Poilievre. Under Bill C-5, that government would have the power to green-light mines, pipelines or highways without any meaningful environmental assessment, without any duty to consult with indigenous nations and without any debate in this House, all with the stroke of a pen.

Does this sound like the Canada that the Prime Minister ran on? Is this what he told Canadians they were voting for? I do not think so.

Let us be very clear about what kind of power grab this will actually mean on the ground. When transparent processes and meaningful consultation are taken away, what happens? Projects do not get built any faster. They end up in court. Communities feel shut out. Protests and blockades happen. Legal battles drag on for years, and we get no progress. We get gridlock.

This is not hypothetical. It is the history of Canada's broken attempts at nation-building without democracy. Let us remember when Stephen Harper tried something similar. He pushed for Bill C-45, the Jobs and Growth Act. It is a piece of legislation that was designed to streamline infrastructure approvals by curtailing environmental reviews and consultations. As political reporter Althia Raj has mentioned, the building Canada act, Bill C-5, is “the type of legislation that Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper might have been too timid to bring forward, fearing a public backlash.”

Now, why do we have this? It is because Canadians have rejected being out of decisions. Indigenous people have rejected being sidelined. Environmental groups have rejected the erasure of safeguards. Under Stephen Harper, nothing got built. Projects failed. The backlash was real, and the consequences were clear.

Bill C-5 is not some brand new plan. It is a recycled strategy. It is one that history tells us will not deliver on its promises, but instead will fuel conflict, division and delays. If the Liberal government wants to build real infrastructure, real jobs and real nation building, it needs to start by respecting democracy and not undermining it. If anyone is worried about the climate crisis, they should be even more concerned. This bill would allow projects to be declared strategic and pushed forward without evaluating their long-term impact on our water, air, wildlife or emissions. That is not planning for the future; that is gambling with the future.

I want to speak directly to the workers in my province, those who built this country and weathered the ups and downs, the booms and busts of Alberta's economy. They deserve good jobs. They deserve stability, but those things cannot happen if the federal government thinks that it can sidestep environmental and indigenous concerns. Anyone who has ever built anything knows it has to be built right the first time.

Let us not pretend that there is not an urgency. Donald Trump has turned everything on its head. There is an economic urgency to act. There is a climate crisis, and there is urgency to act.

Canadians need to build more. We need to start building more with Canadian workers, Canadian products and Canadian resources. It is urgent, but urgency does not give the Liberal government, or any government, a blank cheque. I am proud to be part of a party that fights for good jobs and good governance. I will not accept the false choice between economic ambition and democratic accountability. We can have both. In fact, we must.

I say to my colleagues in the House, let us build. Let us build things. Let us build big things with Canadian workers. Let us build things with Canadian products, but let us do it right. Let us protect workers' rights. Let us protect indigenous rights. Let us protect the environment. No more pushing legislation through, because what happens then is that nothing gets built.

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

Mr. Speaker, I always find it somewhat interesting that we have the NDP here in the House, and then there are NDP governments, whether it is in British Columbia or Manitoba. Wab Kinew has been absolutely fantastic, recognizing the value of legislation of this nature. The former premier of Alberta Rachel Notley was a very strong advocate for the importance of pipelines. Then we get the NDP members here in Ottawa, who continue to go to the far extreme left.

I know there are leadership ambitions, potentially, on the other side. Does the member not recognize that the legislation we have before us today is good for all Canadians? Why would she not support the principles of the legislation?

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I think the member perhaps did not hear what I said, because I said that I actually do support big nation-building projects. However, when we do it wrong, as Stephen Harper did, when we do it wrong, as Bill C-5 would, those projects do not get built. They end up in court. There end up being protests. There end up being blockades, because the Liberals are not doing the hard work to ensure we are doing adequate consultation.

That is to say nothing of how undemocratic it is to ram a giant bill like this through with two days at committee and with no parliamentary oversight. For a man who speaks so much in the House of Commons, one would think the member would have some sort of respect for Parliament.

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

Mr. Speaker, I welcome my colleague back to this place.

There are many things I could focus on from her remarks, but I think it is worth drilling down on one piece of clear misinformation. She made the comment that Stephen Harper got nothing built, which is outrageous and verifiably false. Many pipelines were built under Stephen Harper. The northern gateway pipeline to tidewater was approved, and significant progress was being made on the east-west pipeline. The Liberals passed legislation designed to kill those projects, which were already approved or in the process of being planned.

Will the member maybe seek to clarify her false claim that nothing was built under Stephen Harper and identify the projects that were built under Stephen Harper?

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, in my opinion, the one thing we can actually prove Stephen Harper built in this country was a whole bunch of division, a whole bunch of groups that were muzzled, scientists who were muzzled. Oh, and he also built what I believe was seven affordable homes during his decade.

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

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank and congratulate my colleague from Edmonton Strathcona on her excellent speech. It was reasonable and heartfelt.

I would now like her to comment on the impact that the lack of a proper environmental assessment process would have on the people in her riding in Alberta. What repercussions will this have on future generations in terms of pollution or the destruction of habitats and ecosystems?

[Heather McPherson, NDP, Edmonton Strathcona, AB]

Mr. Speaker, in Edmonton Strathcona, what people want to see is a reasonable approach to developing nation-building projects. My dad was a truck driver. My family works in the oil and gas sector. Having projects stopped in court and held up in gridlock because we do not do the proper work is a real problem.

We also need to make sure we are protecting our wild spaces, protecting our wildlife and ensuring that the environmental protections Canadians have worked so hard for are not able to be run roughshod over by a minister. I think that is what Albertans want to see from the government.

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

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise to speak at second reading to Bill C-5, but I wish I never had to speak to the bill, because I wish I had never had to read the bill. Reading it and understanding it has been one of the most crushingly depressing experiences I have had since I was first elected to this place in 2011.

The hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona quoted noted journalist Althia Raj saying this is the kind of bill Stephen Harper would have liked to bring forward, but he would not have had the nerve.

This is an abomination, and it is not necessary in the quest for building a strong Canadian economy. It does not remove the interprovincial barriers to the extent they need to be removed, because that is not within the federal government's purview to do with the stroke of a pen. However, it says it is going to. It is going to remove some of the barriers the federal government can.

The next part of the bill, part 2, which is rather a separate bill and should have been dealt with separately, is an entirely different construct and unlike anything I have ever seen before in legislation.

Let us try to walk through this calmly and dispassionately and urge the government to rethink the way this bill is being run through Parliament within four days. This is not defensible. The bill requires amendments; it requires study. I have heard many Liberal members in this place, including the government House leader, stand up and say they want it studied. Well, if they want it studied, they have to schedule hearings. They cannot take place in less than 24 hours and be called hearings that heard from witnesses and experts. The programming motion is as offensive as the bill itself, and that is actually saying quite a lot about it.

I have been struggling with trying to decide which adage this bill really proves, “Haste makes waste” or “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”, because both are undoubtedly true.

What we have here is an astounding bill that gives cabinet and the Prime Minister, and only them, the power to make decisions alone in the cabinet room, and implement their own ideas, with no mandatory criteria.

Let us look at part 1, which is the part that is getting the least attention. When I read it, I thought, “Well, labour mobility is a good thing.” I have been railing for years about the need to get rid of interprovincial trade barriers, particularly for creating an east-west, north-south electricity grid. That is something we desperately need in the quest for climate action.

There are things we need to do across this country to make us a truly modern, industrialized nation. Living up to the calls for justice for the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls commission inquiry, I would say we must have safe, reliable and affordable public transportation across this country. We have lost bus service, and Via Rail is inconsistent. That is a true nation-building project; it was actually Pierre Berton's national dream kind of nation-building project. However, we do not need to start out by saying in part 1 that we know what we are doing and that we are in such a hurry that we run the risk of reducing standards that protect health and the environment.

I was called up short when I got an email from the Canadian Cancer Society, because my initial response to reading part 1 of the bill was that I did not have to worry about it; labour mobility is a good thing and harmonizing standards is a good thing. It was not until I read the Canadian Cancer Society's memo that I remembered how getting rid of regulations in the U.K. under Margaret Thatcher led to mad cow disease, because all the red tape, all the things that seemed meaningless, actually protect health and the environment. Getting rid of regulations just to get rid of them is not very smart, as the U.K. realized during the mad cow horrors.

What we have in part 1 that is identified by the Canadian Cancer Society is the idea of comparable standards, which are not defined, and saying that if there are standards that are exercised at a provincial or territorial level, they could be adopted for goods that are in commerce even if they are weaker than the federal standard. The Canadian Cancer Society asks us as parliamentarians to exercise some caution and to amend the bill so there would be a carve-out for health and environmental standards so they would not be weakened.

Businesses looking for profits are, of course, looking for a weaker standard if it helps them make more money. That is the way business works. It is just the reality. We do not want to put in place and incentivize a race to the bottom. Part 1 was getting a lot less attention, so I wanted to stress the Canadian Cancer Society's concerns.

Again, part 1 and part 2 should have been split. They do not have enough in common to be treated as a single bill. I appreciate the Bloc Québécois's efforts to get these two quite separate bills decoupled, but that will not happen, as we will be rushed to finish everything within four days.

Just moments ago, it was referenced that we will have a committee study starting tomorrow afternoon for a bit and then again on Wednesday. One committee will study the bill, the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, which means that the bill, with profound implications for the environment and indigenous rights, will never be studied by the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, nor by the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development or the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.

What part 2 says is that there would be a decision by cabinet about what project qualifies as being in the national interest. There is a definition of national interest if members want to find it, but it is entirely a tautology. A national interest project means what cabinet has decided is a national interest project.

Members can see what would lead to the decision that it is a national interest project. I am sure unintentionally, but many members in this place have stood up and said not to worry because a project must meet all these factors, so it is certainly going to be a good project. The factors listed in subclause 5(6) are good factors, and if they were requirements before a project was listed in the national interest, I would have an entirely different view of this act. It says in subclause 5(6) that cabinet may consider any factor cabinet thinks is relevant, including the extent to which a project can meet the factors that I guess are here for public relations benefit:

(a) strengthen Canada’s autonomy, resilience and security;

(b) provide economic or other benefits to Canada;

(c) have a high likelihood of successful execution;

(d) advance the interests of Indigenous peoples; and

(e) contribute to clean growth and to meeting Canada’s objectives with respect to climate change.

All of that means exactly nothing, exactly zero, because it is a suggestion that cabinet may consider anything cabinet may want to consider. Cabinet members may want to consider some of these things, but they do not have to, and that is a question of just considering them.

I have never seen anything like this in any legislation, so forgive me, because I would rather analyze than talk about how many pieces of propaganda have been woven into this discussion. However, subclause 6(1) is so remarkable that it needs to be at least referenced quickly. From the moment cabinet decides a project is in the national interest, it says:

Every determination and finding that has to be made and every opinion that has to be formed in order for an authorization to be granted in respect of a national interest project is deemed to be made or formed, as the case may be, in favour of permitting the project to be carried out in whole or in part.

In other words, the instruction to future decision-makers, different ministers, for different pieces of legislation is that before they look at the evidence, they have to remember they are exercising their discretion toward getting a project done, regardless of what they find out when they start studying it. This is the ultimate in leap before we look. As environmental lawyer Anna Johnston from West Coast Environmental Law said, “Bill C-5 tosses aside the notion of informed decision making, the precautionary principle and the imperatives of reconciliation, the climate crisis and democratic decision making.”

When we look at a bill like this, we think that we have a parliamentary process for a reason. We have a debate at second reading, it goes to committee, we hear from witnesses, it gets studied and then we amend it. However, everybody is in a hurry. No jobs are going to be saved, because we moved too fast to notice that what we are passing is an abomination. Yes, it would lead to more court cases and, yes, it would lead to more delays, but if nothing else, it would lead to an excess of power in the hands of cabinet that would never be reversed. In that, it is an abuse of Parliament itself.

[Adam van Koeverden, Liberal, Secretary of State (Sport)]

Mr. Speaker, first, I would like to thank my friend and colleague from the Green Party for always raising issues of importance, for being the conscience of this place in so many instances and certainly for being such a stalwart for environmental protection.

As is often the case, we get kind of stuck on one idea or one notion, and a couple of words come to mind, certainly from the Conservative Party. The only kind of idea that they think about when they suggest a project of national interest is an oil pipeline. However, I see lots of other opportunities in this bill. I see wind west, an electric grid from coast to coast and a corridor for high-speed rail. I see a lot of opportunity here for green infrastructure and infrastructure that increases our opportunities on renewables.

I thought I would give the hon. member an opportunity to expound on some of those.

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

Mr. Speaker, surely and yes indeed, we support our economy in Canada and projects in the national interest, but even with a really great goal, we need interties. As I said, the road to hell can be paved with good intentions. We need to link our electricity grid east-west and north-south.

Suppose we want to link eastern Manitoba with western Ontario, but we decide we really do not need to worry about all those boreal forests and indigenous rights, and we just railroad right through something. It then turns out that we have breached treaty obligations to indigenous peoples, and they have traplines throughout those boreal areas that need to be protected. The siting of electrical grids needs to be carefully considered with indigenous rights in mind.

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

Mr. Speaker, Ayn Rand once wrote about the way that socialist societies work. On the one hand, they create so many regulations that everyone is in violation, but then, on the other hand, the government will give individuals a “get out of jail free” card if they have preference and benefit from crony capitalism. That is the way that socialism would work. This might be an area of agreement with the member.

Does the member believe that we should just reduce those regulations and let everyone build those projects or that we should keep those regulations the way they are and no one should build those projects?

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

Mr. Speaker, I am going to say something that perhaps will shock some. Bill C-69 was an abomination. It continued the Harper process of moving to discretionary project lists instead of the tried-and-true, 40-year experience this country had with federal jurisdiction and the federal government having an obligation to review its own projects under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. That act was working well until the spring of 2012, when Harper repealed it. When he put in place his own act, that was the act that Kinder Morgan was being reviewed under and that is what caused the delays.

[Patrick Bonin, Bloc, Repentigny, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to hear what my hon. colleague has to say in light of her extensive experience. I believe she has had the good fortune of working alongside governments for many years, if not decades.

Does she recall ever having seen anything like the government's plan in terms of powers and the danger of weakening environmental protections?

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

Mr. Speaker, this is unlike anything I have ever seen. It is actually unprecedented. I have never seen a government grasp for quite this much power. It is truly unbelievable.

Every time a government or prime minister's office seizes more power, the next government seizes more after that. Therefore, the things that we decry today as opposition members, whether Liberals in the past now do the things that Liberals used to decry, Conservatives now will decry things that they will expand upon another time if they get—

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, John Nater]

Questions and comments, the hon. member for Winnipeg South Centre.