Evidence of meeting #4 for Bill C-39 in the 45th Parliament, 1st session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was nature.
A video is available from Parliament.
Conservative
Jacques Gourde Conservative Lévis—Lotbinière, QC
Thank you, Ms. Proulx.
Professor St‑Hilaire, you spoke about executive overreach. Could you elaborate on that? It's a very important concept.
Professor, Faculty of Law, Université de Sherbrooke, As an Individual
The principle of executive action and public administration is, first and foremost, to comply with the law within its framework. Laws are passed, and they're intended to apply to the government and the public administration.
In this case, though, the government plans to give the executive branch a massive amount of power to depart from the law. In fact, that can be done; all governments must be able to do this when an exceptional and urgent situation arises. Everyone understands that. However, in a situation like that, it's important to be frank, to be transparent, to be open and to acknowledge that the government is resorting to exceptional means and that it normally doesn't behave that way. Laws have been passed for a reason. It has to be transparent. It has to be open. It has to be temporary. It has to be more closely monitored. That's how to do things properly.
If people don't want to resort to exceptional means, then they amend the law. You're all parliamentarians, so you should understand your role. In Athens, in 403 BC, people knew the difference between a law and an order.
Conservative
Professor, Faculty of Law, Université de Sherbrooke, As an Individual
They were able to make that distinction.
Conservative
Jacques Gourde Conservative Lévis—Lotbinière, QC
Thank you.
I have one last question for you, since my time is running out.
One example of executive power going too far is the Alto high-speed rail. The executive branch gave itself the power to expropriate land. After the events at Mirabel, laws had been put in place to prevent this from happening again. However, everything was dismissed out of hand.
Is this type of regulation abusive?
Professor, Faculty of Law, Université de Sherbrooke, As an Individual
My remarks aren't about what political choices should be made. As a constitutional law professor, I'm focusing my remarks on how. The choice of whether or not to use emergency powers is up to you. I'm discussing how to comply with international best practices regarding the rule of law. I'm not going to comment here on the substance of cases. I'm not here for that. I'm speaking as an expert.
Conservative
Jacques Gourde Conservative Lévis—Lotbinière, QC
The government is overstepping international best practices, then.
Professor, Faculty of Law, Université de Sherbrooke, As an Individual
Absolutely, the government oversteps international best practices when it tries to pass off emergency powers as normal powers, when it doesn't set time limits on them and when it doesn't ensure, for example, that Parliament will continuously be able to control powers that don't normally belong to the executive.
Professor, Faculty of Law, Université de Sherbrooke, As an Individual
All of that was addressed in the last amendments to Bill C‑5, and all of that is what's being removed.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal James Maloney
I'm going to have to stop you there.
Ms. Desrochers, we go to you for six minutes.
Liberal
Caroline Desrochers Liberal Trois-Rivières, QC
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I'd like to thank the witnesses for being here today, in person or by video conference.
Thank you very much, Ms. Proulx, for talking about the benefits of the Alto project for Quebec, which would be between $40 billion and $60 billion. That's significant. We also have yet to mention the environmental benefits. It's a fact that the high-speed rail will significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
To answer my colleague's question, I have to tell you that the people in my riding, Trois-Rivières—and the same is certainly also true for the people in the riding of my colleague from Peterborough—are very much looking forward to being able to go to work in Montreal or Toronto within 45 minutes, compared with the two hours it takes now. This is a project that's highly anticipated in our region.
I would now like to come back to Bill C‑39.
Thank you very much for the brief you published. Some of your recommendations aim to require departments to take into account the technical, economic and practical feasibility of the conditions imposed as part of the approvals for all projects. Bill C‑39 would make that very explicit when it comes to, for example, the Fisheries Act, the Species at Risk Act, the Navigable Waters Act and the Canadian Energy Regulator.
Does what we put in the bill address your concerns, or do you think we need to go further?
Chief Executive Officer, Fédération des chambres de commerce du Québec
I would say that the bill addresses our concerns.
Whether at the federal or provincial level, the challenge for businesses that carry out major investment projects in both infrastructure and energy—I'm thinking of the mining sector and transportation infrastructure, in particular—is the lack of predictability. It's also about being asked questions that are difficult to answer and that maybe carry less weight in a decision-making process. Being more practical, looking at economic aspects and having predictability will enable investors to have predictability. It will make them want to invest here. It will give them insight into what to expect.
Now, I want to be very clear: Businesses will comply with the regulations that are in place. For us, the idea, our interest, our objective, is to have that predictability and to be able to move through the process more quickly, without necessarily skipping any steps.
Liberal
Caroline Desrochers Liberal Trois-Rivières, QC
Thank you for that.
Do you think it's possible to have conditions that remain strict from an environmental standpoint, while being realistic and achievable for project proponents? Is it possible to find that balance?
Chief Executive Officer, Fédération des chambres de commerce du Québec
Absolutely. I have spoken with a number of businesses that were going through approval processes with the provincial or federal government—to bring us back to Ottawa—and what they often mention is the duplication of applications and the fact that they have to wait for a response to a submitted form before they can move to the next step. How can the process be made more agile, without necessarily skipping steps, to enable businesses to move forward in this process? What can actually be done to better support the people who apply, to help them get through the various steps?
Liberal
Caroline Desrochers Liberal Trois-Rivières, QC
That's great, thank you very much.
I will now turn to the representatives of the Canadian Federation of Agriculture.
Thank you so much for bringing the examples of the last two work stoppages and their impact on farmers. I'd really like to dig a bit further into this, because the current project does put some guardrails and some conditions around how the minister would be able to invoke section 107, as well as the national interest assessment.
I'd like to understand this: From your perspective, what other means do farmers have of getting their product to market if rails and ports are not available to them?
Executive Director, Canadian Federation of Agriculture
Simply, they do not have any alternatives. For foreign markets in particular, ports are absolutely essential. Even for the vast majority of producers that are shipping domestically, if you're in the prairie provinces, as a prime example, costs and shortages in trucking make it cost-prohibitive to ship many of the commodities farmers rely on for their incomes.
Liberal
Executive Director, Canadian Federation of Agriculture
It could be a loss of crops, or it could be a loss of quality. There are a number of different implications that can happen, but all of them come directly out of the farmer's bottom line at the end of the day.
Liberal
Caroline Desrochers Liberal Trois-Rivières, QC
You talked about $600 million in lost sales. Concretely, I'm curious about small farmers. I know you don't have a number, but in terms of magnitude, I'm trying to get to the impact on the small farmers, their families, their people and their ability to put food on the table.
Executive Director, Canadian Federation of Agriculture
Right now, 98% of Canadian farms are family-owned, small and medium-sized enterprises. There are literally tens of thousands that would be implicated. Like we said, we represent 190,000 farm families across the country. Depending on where the work stoppage occurs, there could be implications for tens of thousands of farmers, if not over 100,000 farmers, at any point. They are family operations.
Liberal
Caroline Desrochers Liberal Trois-Rivières, QC
Thank you.
My last question is this: What do you think would be different if the provisions in this bill had been in place back then?
Executive Director, Canadian Federation of Agriculture
What we see as beneficial in this bill, certainly, is the longer period for conciliation. The special mediator function is a critical tool in ensuring that there is good-faith negotiating happening earlier in the process and ensuring that we aren't getting to a point where there's a labour disruption without that real good-faith negotiating happening. That's why we're so seized with the need to move that special mediator function to an automatic one at that 75-day period to ensure there is that good-faith negotiation happening in advance of a work stoppage.