Bill C-39 Committee on Nov. 2nd, 2026

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Okay. Thank you.

I think that's my time. Thanks.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Mr. Bains is next.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Richmond East—Steveston, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thank you to all of our witnesses who have joined us here in person and online.

I'm going to go to Dr. Frank first.

You talked a bit about ecosystems and salmon. The nature strategy includes important elements like deploying advanced data infrastructure to comprehensively map critical ecosystems, biodiversity hot spots and species at risk. A considerable amount of work has been done and continues to be done in those areas.

You mentioned salmon. I can speak to the salmon restoration investment. We've seen an abundance of return and some positive outcomes happening from that, and investments into protecting the southern resident killer whales and the new oceans protection plan.

My question for you is this. When it comes not only to tools that are being deployed through those programs, but also other tools with respect to the nature strategy to help inform projects in their early planning phase, could they contribute to positive outcomes to ecosystems and responsible development in the regions that these projects are in?

[Dr. Beatrice Frank]

The big issue with this new bill is that we are talking mostly about development, but we don't talk really about conservation. Currently in the Salish Sea, there is not really any protected area—

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Richmond East—Steveston, BC]

I know, but if I can just stop you there, I just talked about all of the conservation pieces in advance of asking that question. I'm just wondering if that can contribute to assist in major projects.

[Dr. Beatrice Frank]

It's really hard to say, when we have been seeing all of these proposed projects pushed forward without really having done the work ahead. The strategy is an incredible strategy. The promise for ocean protection is welcomed, and we have hope, but it's also true that they may come too late if we push into a pipeline and Roberts Bank terminal 2 in areas of incredible sensitivity.

I took very long, but the question is that as we see those promises, we also see this industrial development coming, and we don't see where they link and can help each other to build a strong Canada with a really strong environment.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Richmond East—Steveston, BC]

Okay.

I'll go to Ms. Johnston.

Bill C-39 is designed to eliminate some of the duplication that exists for project proponents in current regulatory processes. Through regions of national interest, regional assessments will be used to streamline conditions by providing broad parameters for projects. Without this, every subsequent project within the same area will be subject to the same assessment work. Do you see this as tenable?

[Anna Johnston]

I'd point out two things.

One is that under the Impact Assessment Act, which is the governing legislation for regional assessments, there are no requirements around regional assessments except that they include some form of public participation and indigenous engagement.

There's a regional assessment currently under way in Nova Scotia of offshore exploratory drilling that's being done for the purpose of excluding offshore exploratory drilling projects from impact assessment. It's occurring in six months. There is no public participation. The agency is doing some targeted conversations with a handful of selected experts and different groups, including various federal departments, but there's no real public engagement, and it's far too short a timeline to inform any kind of project-level decision-making.

Also, I'd go back to what Ms. Levin in the last panel said around impact assessments. Due to regulatory and policy changes, the federal government has gone from assessing thousands of projects a year to assessing roughly 2% of major projects in Canada under the Impact Assessment Act.

Under even more recent policy agreements and regulations, we're looking at probably an average of one project a year triggering an impact assessment. We are already in a vast deregulation zone. There is no problem around impact assessment and duplication that this bill is seeking to fix anymore, because the federal government has largely abandoned the project of informed decision-making and environmental impact assessment.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Richmond East—Steveston, BC]

You've proposed some amendments to improve regional assessments seeking clarified standards. Can you elaborate on what those changes could look like?

[Anna Johnston]

I should say that regional assessment is a known tool, internationally, for making better decisions at what was called the global scale—doing things like looking at cumulative effects outside of individual projects, gathering baseline data and doing a lot of the work that really shouldn't be on the shoulders of proponents to do on a project-by-project basis. The problem, as I mentioned, is that the Impact Assessment Act doesn't set out any guiding principles, objectives or outcomes for regional assessments.

Some of the amendments we've proposed are to add purposes, provisions, factors to consider and outcomes, like the identification of areas to prioritize for conservation, compared with areas that might be more suitable for development. It's about making sure you're doing robust baseline data analysis, information gathering and cumulative effects assessment, and finding ways to apply the mitigation hierarchy.

Because of the way amendments are allowed under bills like this, you couldn't bake them into the Impact Assessment Act, but you could put them in the Building Canada Act as prerequisites for any kind of designation of a region of national interest.

[Parm Bains, Liberal, Richmond East—Steveston, BC]

This is a bit of a longer—

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thanks, Mr. Bains. That's time.

Mr. Ste-Marie, we'll go over to you.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Welcome to all three witnesses. Thank you very much for being here. You've raised some very important points that will be helpful to our study of Bill C‑39.

My first question is for Ms. Johnston.

Towards the end of your presentation, you said that, on Friday, nine first nations had launched court challenges to the Pacific link pipeline route. That brings the number of legal challenges to the project to 10 and the number of broader challenges to the Building Canada Act to two.

Do you think Bill C‑39 is likely to face similar challenges?

[Anna Johnston]

It does, absolutely, and maybe even more so.

Section 35 upholds indigenous people's rights and titles, which also flow from the honour of the Crown. Over the years, the courts have developed principles around what it means to meaningfully consult indigenous people when Crown action is contemplated that could infringe on those rights. “Meaningful” depends on the circumstance and the amount of potential infringement on rights. “Meaningful” includes things like having sufficient time, having government go into dialogue with indigenous people with an open mind, and having enough information to understand the extent of the proposed infringement.

Pacific link was approved after two months of consultation. There wasn't even a proper project description. The route wasn't known yet. The government signalled its intention to approve the project under the Building Canada Act. None of those are meaningful. It went in with a closed mind, not enough information and not enough time for meaningful dialogue.

Bill C-39 takes that approach and puts it on steroids. If you look at regions of national interest, what is being proposed under the Building Canada Act is that they would take a broad look at a region, absent specific project impacts. Again, if we use the ring of fire as an example, we're looking at, potentially, thousands or tens of thousands of square kilometres. You can't do a site-specific consultation with indigenous people in a regional assessment at that scale. What Bill C-39 does is say that once a regional assessment has been conducted and a region of national interest designated, projects will be automatically approved. That decision is made by the legislation itself. Again, this is closed-minded, with not enough information and not enough time.

The potential for rights infringement is going to be significant. The potential for the public to feel they haven't had a chance to have a meaningful say about the individual projects could also lead to significant civil unrest and lawsuits, and not just on section 35 grounds.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

That's another example that really shows this is a bad bill that can't be made acceptable, as you said. Thank you.

Did you have more to say?

[Anna Johnston]

There is one other point to illustrate. I mentioned this in my opening remarks but didn't have time to elaborate on it.

There are significant legal questions around what we call the Henry VIII clauses. The deeming provisions—the fact that the bill deems all legal requirements to have been met and ministerial opinions to have been formed in favour of the project, plus the requirement to issue the conditions document—effectively do an end run around the courts. The courts take a dim view of Parliament attempting to circumvent judicial oversight.

The separation of powers in our Constitution says that we have the executive branch, we have the legislature and we have the judiciary. Bill C-39 effectively tries to cut the judiciary out. I suspect that a review in court would take, as I said, a very dim view of those provisions of the act that undermine the ability to challenge federal decisions.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

Yes, what we're seeing is an unprecedented concentration of power.

Thank you.

My next question is for Mr. Lesosky.

Thank you very much for being with us. I want to recognize everyone in your union and the very important work they do. We certainly appreciate the fact that the members you represent keep us so safe.

We've talked a lot about the labour dispute affecting your members. The negotiations dragged on because of section 107 of the Canada Labour Code. Then, in the dispute involving the pilots, which you mentioned, an agreement was reached quickly because the government had said it wouldn't use section 107.

In a previous panel, we heard from Magali Picard, the president of the Fédération des travailleurs et travailleuses du Québec, which also represents your members who are based in Quebec. She said that the Canada Labour Code amendments to section 107 proposed in Bill C‑39 could result in more labour conflicts than before. Currently, 5% of labour negotiations with federally regulated employers end in labour disputes, and she said that if the proposed amendments go ahead, the percentage would probably go up.

Would you like to comment on that?

[Wesley Lesosky]

Yes, I agree.

Thank you for the question. I will respond in English. I apologize.

Yes, I think there will be huge challenges when Bill C-39 is in place, because again, as I mentioned earlier, it's going to delay things, it's going to push things to start earlier, and it's going to have parameters that don't have stopgaps put in the process.

I can see it from our point of view and what we went through at the Air Canada time. The introduction of the special mediator, the commencement of bargaining earlier and all those types of things don't put in guardrails to stop the process from getting worse or put a stop barrier down so one doesn't go on strike.

I don't see this as a positive step forward to do what it's attempting to do.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Mr. Seeback, we're back to you.

[Kyle Seeback, Conservative, Dufferin—Caledon, ON]

Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.

I have a motion that I hope is not controversial. We should probably all agree on it. I move:

That, notwithstanding any previous decision of the committee, for the purpose of its consideration of Bill C-39, the committee:

a) Hold an additional eight hours of meetings to receive witness testimony during the week of November 16, 2026;

b) Invite parties represented on the committee to provide witness lists for these meetings, ranked in priority order, provided that they are received by the clerk by no later than 12:00 p.m. on Friday, November 6, 2026;

c) Extend the deadline for amendments to be received by the clerk to Thursday, November 19, 2026, at 5:00 p.m.;

d) Begin clause-by-clause consideration of the bill during the week of November 30, 2026; and

e) Accept written briefs until Thursday, November 12, 2026.

The basis for the motion, Mr. Chair, is that we have an extensive number of potential witnesses who would like to come and give their evidence before the committee. This has been done on an exceptionally tightened time frame.

For example, the Canadian Labour Congress, when they were at committee, called on the government to suspend further consideration and adoption of the proposed amendments affecting the right to strike, and to engage in meaningful consultations with trade union representatives in Canada.

CUPE National, on October 8, said:

As part of its effort to ram Bill C-39 through Parliament without proper scrutiny, the Carney government established a special Senate committee to fast-track the bill, allowing the Senate to study it concurrently with the House of Commons rather than following the usual legislative process.

For myself, I have many witnesses who have been submitted to come here, and we have run out of time for them to appear. We have heard repeatedly over the course of these hearings how people in labour organizations believe the changes that are being made in this legislation effectively deprive them of their right to strike, yet many unions are not able to come to the committee because of this shortened and abridged timeline.

I'm sure there are other witnesses my friend in the Bloc Québécois would like to have here, and I know my colleagues have witnesses who would also like to appear.

This is not a long extension. I think it's a reasonable and moderate proposal that will allow for more people to be able to come and give their evidence on what the government calls a defining piece of legislation. I do not believe such a defining piece of legislation should be studied in a matter of weeks in a few meetings. We should have eight more hours. It's a reasonable request. It will allow so many more parties to come and give evidence, especially those in the labour movement who believe their right to strike is under attack by the government.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you, Mr. Seeback.

Mr. Ste-Marie.

[Gabriel Ste-Marie, Bloc, Joliette—Manawan, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I'd like to thank my colleague for his motion, which has my support.

For the interpreters' sake, I just want to remind committee members that it is better to provide the interpreters with a translated version of a motion before moving it. Otherwise, they at least need to have an opportunity to read it, to make their job less difficult.

Numerous people wanting to appear have reached out to me, but there aren't enough spots, so obviously, I support the motion.

If we schedule another eight hours to meet with witnesses, I think we'll be able to do what the committee studying the bill in the Senate is supposed to do. The fact that we in the House are spending less time hearing from witnesses than the committee in the other place is a real problem for me. For that reason, I will be voting in favour of the motion.

I'll try not to comment further, so that ideally, we can keep hearing from these excellent witnesses.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, James Maloney]

Thank you, Mr. Ste-Marie.

We'll call a vote.

(Motion negatived: nays 6; yeas 5)

We'll carry on.

Mr. Seeback, thank you for that.

Who's next? That will take us to Mr. Danko.