Bill C-30 (39th Parliament, 1st Session) Committee on March 26th, 2007

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

What I have been going on is the difference in the language here about the Government of Canada being committed to negotiate with the provinces. It doesn't presuppose how those negotiations would finish and whether it would be an expenditure or not. If it's an existing body, there may not be.

Go ahead.

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

There is nothing telling us who will be responsible for covering the expenses of this independent body. The reference here is to negotiating “with the provinces for the purpose of designating an independent body”. For example—and this is just an hypothesis—the provinces could very well pick up the tab. There is nothing to say that the costs would have to be covered by the federal government.

The amended section would read as follows:

8.1 Within six months after the day on which this Act comes into force, the Government of Canada shall negotiate with the provinces for the purpose of designating an independent body responsible for—

As I see it, adopting this amendment is not a commitment to incur expenses.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Mr. Jean, I'm sorry, Mr. Cullen was first.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thanks, Chair.

One question is for you, Mr. Moffet, in terms of the interpretation of this, that it's to designate to an existing body, thereby avoiding any expenditures. I think the fundamental question that's been raised is in terms of why the commissioner amendment failed because it was deemed royal recommendation and this one might not. So that's to Mr. Moffet.

I have one comment to Mr. Jean about this being out of order because it's amending to CEPA. That is how Bill C-30 works. It's one long stretch of amendments primarily to CEPA. So on that as an objection, and maybe I missed his point, there's no problem with that. It's what we're doing all along the way.

So there are those two pieces.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Just before we go to Mr. McGuinty, the distinction in my mind was that the Liberal amendment specifically called for the establishment of, and clearly some expenditure. This calls for negotiations with the provinces.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

I just want to be clear with you, then, that because this is designating pre-existing things, your interpretation is that there's a potential for no money to be spent at all.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Exactly.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Okay.

Then on that question to Mr. Moffet, it's actually important to me. Has the department considered which body that might be? I'm trying to think of what organization or group that exists between the feds and the provinces right now might handle that. None pops to mind. You might consider NRTEE, but that's an expenditure, for sure, to get them to do extra work.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Mr. McGuinty and then Mr. Jean, and then we're going to eventually—

[David McGuinty, Liberal, Ottawa South, ON]

Thanks, Mr. Chair.

On this debate about royal recommendation, this is precisely why I raised it last Thursday, because I knew this was going to cause problems throughout all of these amendments put forward to amend Bill C-30. That's why I put two questions to the parliamentary secretary before I was heckled down, asking for clarification from the government. What constitutes royal recommendation expenditure and what does not? It's not clear to me. It's not clear to committee members right now. We're going to have a series.

As a former trial attorney, I would say that one could argue that this costs money. I could argue that there are probably three or four other amendments in this package of amendments that would cost money. That's why I put two pointed and specific questions to the parliamentary secretary last Thursday to try to solve this problem, Mr. Chair, before we went on this journey. That's why I raised it specifically at the front end of this process last Thursday.

I still don't have an answer. Now, clearly the government itself doesn't have an answer. So I think it would be important to nail this down before we go any further, because if this is going to be an issue that's raised in every second or subsequent or third amendment, we're going to have a problem as to what constitutes royal recommendation and what calls for expenditure and what does not.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Mr. Jean.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I don't know if other members of this committee have had legislative experience, but I was on a legislative committee one year ago, and there was a Liberal chair, and certainly there were members from all parties. How it was explained to us, as far as relevancy goes, not as far as royal recommendation goes, was that you have a ball of legislation and you can make amendments to that legislation, but as soon as you go outside of that ball and put something that's separate and apart as an entity, it has no relevancy to the legislation itself. In this particular case, I think that could be successfully argued, not only royal recommendation but the relevancy of it.

Quite frankly, many of the amendments are the same way. I think we need clarification as to what the chair is going to accept as far as amendments go and the relevancy of them, and whether or not they require royal recommendation, because if it's outside of that legislative ball, which is Bill C-30 and the legislation.... An amendment is an amendment, but a complete change or something outside of that ball is not relevant.

I would ask the chair to make a determination in relation to both of those issues.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Your point is taken, and the chair will do that. We're going to break for the vote and that will give the chair a little time to consult with the people who are....

[An hon. member]

Can we go to vote?

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Yes, that means we are suspended. Thank you. Good work.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Let us reconvene. Let's get back to the issue at hand before the break.

Some concerns have been raised regarding the admissibility of amendment BQ-4. You've put the chair in a somewhat difficult position, which I recognize is your job, in the sense that I'm being essentially asked to rule on an amendment that has not yet been moved, and in fact Monsieur Bigras specifically asked that it be stood.

I will say this in an attempt to be helpful. I examined BQ-4, as we had already talked about, and was of the opinion that it was admissible because of the differences that I mentioned. The other ones are very specific; this is very vague. It does not presuppose the outcome of a future negotiation. If Monsieur Bigras wishes to formally move the amendment right now, then I'd be pleased to hear any points of order regarding its admissibility. But my initial impression is that it would be in order.

So does the committee wish to stand BQ-4, or do members wish to have it moved and deal with it now?

[Bernard Bigras, Bloc, Rosemont—La Petite-Patrie, QC]

I move that this amendment stand.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

The proposal is to stand BQ-4. Do we have agreement on that? BQ-4 is stood. Thank you.

In reference to trying to make blanket rulings in advance, I'm not in a position to do that. I look at the amendments as they come up. Hopefully I will have an opportunity to look at them ahead of time and I'll have an idea formed in my mind, and it will be based on as much logic and advice as I can muster, and we'll deal with them one by one as this situation comes up.

So moving right along, I call clause 5.

(On clause 5)

The first amendment to clause 5 is NDP-11 on page 18. I will point out that there are some line conflicts with NDP-12 on page 19, with L-18 and BQ-5 on page 20. We're going to go slowly because this may get confusing. The net impact of that is that if NDP-11 is adopted, NDP-12, L-18, and BQ-5 cannot be put. You can only amend a line once.

Mr. Cullen, would you like to move your amendment or speak to your amendment?

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Thank you, Chair. I'm contemplating the decision you've just made for us this evening as well. It complicates things slightly. But we'll push on and see where we get.

There's problematic language in what Bill C-30 proposed in terms of equivalency. This NDP-11 amendment is trying to move out some of that language. This is highly contingent upon some of the other conversations going on with some of the Bloc and Liberal considerations, but we still think this has merit, because the whole equivalency regime, the way Bill C-30 is designed right now, has presented a number of problems that were brought forward by witnesses. What equivalency measures are brought forward by provincial governments, and how do they then affect the overall situation of the country? If equivalency is read the wrong way, as we believe it is in the language right now, under Bill C-30, it opens up opportunity for provinces to make some initial efforts, but actually falls far short of what our international obligations are holding us to and, in a sense, makes the concept of national targets even more difficult to achieve, because provinces will have various equivalencies that they've then orchestrated with the government that don't as a summation add up to what we actually want to achieve as a country.

So I move that amendment. I'm open to conversations. I think there's room for us to combine some of the better elements of these amendments and proceed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Discussion? Mr. Warawa.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley, BC]

Chair, I would suggest that we stand clause 5 to work on equivalency language that would strengthen the bill.

I would ask that we stand this clause 5.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Is there agreement on that?

I think something may become obvious in a couple of these.

(Amendment allowed to stand)

(Clause 5 allowed to stand)

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Mr. Jean.

[Brian Jean, Conservative, Fort McMurray—Athabasca, AB]

I was going to ask what the main contention of Mr. Cullen is in relation to this particular clause. I know we've stood it, but I just wonder if we could have a 20-second general discussion as to whether he's opposed to the results-oriented equivalency, or would he like to see more about a process-oriented equivalency?

I read the amendment with interest. It would be good to get his reasoning behind what he opposed.

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

This is going to combine with what a number of the other amendments that are—I'm getting feedback here. I actually asked for the volume to be turned up, but I didn't realize what I was asking for.

While there could be some differences between what each province seeks to do and their own measures to meet a national standard, if the equivalency is not held by some objective standard, it will be impossible until much later, after the fact, as we've seen with even the federal programs. If you can't clearly delineate what the policy is as to how many carbon emission reductions you can expect—If a province comes forward with an equivalency that says it will move so many automobiles off the road or that it will make so many of them of a lower emission standard, they have to be able to account for that in the same way as the federal government is accounting for it, so there aren't apples and oranges and so the province next door can't make claims. If you don't have clarity with the accountability, you'll have an inter-jurisdictional mess between provinces, with some of them saying, “We've met our targets”, and others saying, “No, you didn't”.

We believe if you don't clear up the language—and I know we're going to stand this motion—that will connect back to funding, because we imagine the federal government will use contingency funding through this process. So if province X says, “This is the equivalency we're doing to your plant”, the government will say, “Here's a certain amount of money, if you actually meet those targets you're setting”. If you don't have the same comparison of the effect, which is at the heart of this debate, then there's no way for Canada to stand on the international stage to say this is what we've done, but more importantly, this is what we're going to do.

Your equivalency agreements are a series of different measures, and none of them are really objective. So we have a caution over the language the Bloc is going to be supporting. I think there have been some potential modifications that we're willing to look at.

That's the root of it. We need to have the same language, if you will, when talking about greenhouse gas emissions from coast to coast to coast.