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

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

If I may, you're asking for an objective test that is results oriented and that looks at the ultimate results.

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

Yes.

Some of this language gets reinterpreted by the lawyers in terms of what the provinces are mandated to do in a results-oriented equivalency. A province saying that it will reduce so many tonnes of carbon and then choosing to buy a bunch of credits in the short term may achieve the result policy-wise, but it may not actually be to the benefit of the country because the structural changes haven't been made. It's usually the structural changes that go first, rather than something where you just buy credits. That's probably a good example of the pitfalls that exist with an equivalency.

We do have some history with this, though, in CEPA and some other places, so it's not as if we have to recast the wheel. We've done this before. Mr. Mills, who has joined us, will know that better than most.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

I'd like to move on, then, if we could. We've had more discussion on that than procedure would normally allow.

Moving on to new clause 5.1, which is BQ-6 on page 21, it's the GHG territorial approach.

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

I thought that we stood clause 5 in its entirety.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

This is a new clause 5.1.

I will point out that you may want to stand this one too, because of the relationship of this one back to BQ-4—again—and BQ-10.

There may be some merit in considering looking at everything that has amendments attached up to clause 18, because everything really starts happening at clause 18. We can go through and, if it's amenable, carry the clauses that have no amendments attached—there aren't too many—and proceed up to clause 18. We'll stand everything other than what we've passed up to clause 18. We could start with clause 18, because that's where the real meat is, and then come back to the other ones, because a lot of these are contingent on what's coming after clause 18.

Go ahead, Mr. Cullen.

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

Mr. Chair, just for the sake of the process, are you suggesting this to the committee right now—that we stand them all and go right to clause 18?

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

I'm just throwing that out for consideration, because I think we're going to see this happening—

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

Under that consideration, can you give us a minute to consider this? That changes a lot of the objectives and the work that we've done for this evening in expecting more of a process through the clauses in a numerical fashion.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

I have no problem with that. There are four or five or so that have no amendments attached. We could go ahead procedurally and just pass those.

Why don't we suspend for a maximum of five minutes? The cookies should be here shortly.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Could we return to the table?

We have a slightly modified—very slightly modified—suggestion, in the interest of making some progress. With some discussion around the room, I'm going to make a slightly modified suggestion on that, so that we can tick off some of the things we may be able to get done here.

Start with clause 6. Start with clauses that, at least in our analysis, have no consequential implications or line conflicts, or clauses for which we have received no amendments, so we can step through those. I suspect enough discussion may come up on those anyway. We can deal with some of them, tick them off, and work our way towards clause 18, which we probably won't get to today. But we will at least have a number of clauses dealt with, and we can start putting some X's on the wall to say that we've made some progress here.

Is that agreeable? Mr. Cullen.

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

Chair, just to clarify, I missed the very first part of what you said, that we're going to deal with territoriality—

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

No.

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

We'll just pass over it for now, go through some of the not—and then we're going to turn back.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

We'll deal with some of the ones where there are no amendments that we've received or no consequential nature or line conflicts.

Monsieur Bigras.

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

In my view, we're not far off from an amendment that we could move on clause 5 and the question of adopting a territorial approach. Therefore, I have no objections to moving on to clause 6 and then quickly coming back to clause 5 later. As a see it, we would settle a good bit of the various discussions that we have had thus far.

Can you give us your assurance that we will come back to clause 5 immediately after we have dispensed with clause 6?

I'd like five minutes, since we're working on an amendment to clause 5.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Okay, so you're not prepared to start with clause 6 until you've had a couple more minutes. Is that what you're saying?

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

We could in fact move on to clause 6. I suppose you're going to suggest that we move on to amendment BQ-7.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

No, BQ-7, which is clause 6.

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

I move that we proceed to amendment BQ-7 while we await the drafting of an amendment to clause 5.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

So you're happy to start with clause 6, which is BQ-7, and then go back to clause 5.

Is that agreeable around the room, so we can get going on something here?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

All right.

(On clause 6)

Moving right along, then, the relevant amendment is BQ-7, on page 24.

Monsieur Bigras, I'll ask you to address that.

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

Amendment BQ-7 proposes the following: That Bill C-30, in Clause 6, be amended by replacing line 12 on page 5 with the following:

“to pollution prevention and greenhouse gases.”

In point of fact, the purpose of the amendment is to add the words “greenhouses gases” after the words “pollution prevention”. Thus, the amended clause would read as follows:

(5) The Ministers may conduct research and studies relating to the effectiveness of mitigation and control technologies and techniques relating to pollution prevention and greenhouse gases”.

We're proposed that the words “and greenhouse gases” be tacked on to the end of the clause.

[The Chair, Conservative, Laurie Hawn]

Okay, is there debate on that?

Mr. Cullen

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

Why do we need this amendment? We'd have to know if the minister can do this now or whether we need to add a new responsibility. Perhaps the officials could field that question.