Evidence of meeting #74 for Environment and Sustainable Development in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was power.
A recording is available from Parliament.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Okay. There we go.
Could you repeat the name of the minister?
12:30 p.m.
An hon. member
It's Nathan Neudorf.
12:30 p.m.
Conservative
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
We're going to vote on this amendment.
Mr. Kmiec is saying we should invite one or the other. Who decides, then, which one to invite? I guess it's at the discretion of the chair.
12:30 p.m.
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
Speaking to the amendment, if I may, it seems unclear, first of all, who is making the decision as to which of the two individuals comes to the committee, whether it's the chair of the committee in the invitation or whether it's the Government of Alberta when they get the invitation and it says either this minister or that minister.
I think “or” just confuses matters, and I would much prefer.... I think the compromise here is to have the word “and”. We invite both of the ministers and then we can pose questions to both of them.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
You're amending Mr. Kmiec's amendment, changing “or” to “and”.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Let's vote on that.
You've been very helpful, Mr. Bachrach, I must say.
12:30 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
Do we have unanimous consent?
(Subamendment agreed to)
Good. We are going to change “or” to “and”.
Now we're going to vote on Mr. Kmiec's amendment as amended.
(Amendment as amended agreed to)
You see? We're good. This is great.
12:35 p.m.
Bloc
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
The amendment did pass unanimously.
Now we'll go to the motion.
It looks like we probably have unanimous consent to adopt the motion as amended.
12:35 p.m.
An hon. member
No.
12:35 p.m.
Some hon. members
Oh, oh!
12:35 p.m.
An hon. member
Don't push your luck, Mr. Chair.
12:35 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
We'll have a recorded vote.
(Motion as amended agreed to: yeas 7; nays: 4 [See Minutes of Proceedings])
12:35 p.m.
Conservative
Rick Perkins Conservative South Shore—St. Margarets, NS
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I believe I've been subbed in and I appreciate listening to this important discussion that we've had today.
With that, I'd like to move another motion, if I could:
That the committee express its disappointment with the regulatory environment created by this government that has led to tidal power projects pulling out of Canada and acknowledges that one of the primary factors contributing to the departure of these capital investments has been recent changes that have created an intricate regulatory landscape.
I believe the clerk has a copy of the motion, and the motion is being distributed. Thank you.
For those who are not aware, obviously for me as the member of Parliament for South Shore—St. Margarets in Nova Scotia, the issue is the attempt to create renewable energy opportunities in Atlantic Canada so that we can meet the net-zero target and get off of coal by 2030, as the government has mandated. Nova Scotia is the province that generates the second-largest amount of electricity from coal. The coal comes from Colombia.
There have been a lot of attempts to deal with the power of the Bay of Fundy. If you're not familiar with the Bay of Fundy, it has the largest tides in the world, with a range of 52 feet. It rises and drops every day. The flow of the water through the Bay of Fundy is equivalent to the flow of all rivers in the world. In one day, it goes in and out of the Bay of Fundy. That being the case, there have been many projects trying to harness the tidal energy of the Bay of Fundy. Most of them have involved putting turbines on the ocean floor. Most of those did not succeed.
However, there was a recent experiment on tidal energy that had a great deal of success, but it was an experiment and it had a temporary permit. It was by a company called Sustainable Marine Energy Canada. It involved a floating turbine that was on top of the water. It's the first project that actually didn't get destroyed by the tide. Within 24 to 48 hours the power of the Bay of Fundy tide had destroyed all those turbines that were put on the ocean floor. The actual turbines were destroyed by the power of that tide, which you can actually surf on when it comes in.
A new approach was to put it on top of the water, and that succeeded. In fact, it didn't get destroyed. Not only did it not get destroyed, but it actually produced energy into the Nova Scotia power grid directly and is the first tidal project in Canada that has actually produced revenue for the company from the generation of that tidal power.
As some of you may be aware, though, when the project moved to the next stage, the process was stopped. It was stopped by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, which has a great deal of power, and not only land-based energy projects to stop pipelines because of fish in a stream or some sort of thing. This has happened many times. They actually have a lot of power. Of course everything in the ocean is a federal responsibility and, therefore, DFO has the ability and responsibility to manage the oceans. In this case, after five years of a project and $60 million of capital invested, when the project was moving to the next step of the first successful tidal power project, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans under this Liberal government stopped it.
Now that turbine has been removed from the water and actually disassembled, and the company is leaving. That doesn't mean they're not going to try to continue to challenge these things, but to understand what's being missed here and why I think this committee needs to express its disappointment on the issue, I will say that it is estimated that by 2040, the tidal energy industry in Nova Scotia could generate $1.7 billion for Nova Scotia's GDP. It could create 22,000 full-time jobs and generate as much as $815 million in labour income.
More important than that, though, because of the obvious predictability of these tides, because of the moon and the rise of the sea, this zero-emission energy, which has had a successful target.... Three hundred megawatts of generation, which isn't a lot relative to power, could actually power one-quarter of Nova Scotia's homes through tidal power.
Maybe it doesn't seem like a lot, but that's estimated to be just a fraction of the potential tidal energy power—clean renewable energy—of the Bay of Fundy that we all see. It is estimated that 2,500 megawatts could be generated, which means Nova Scotia could become an exporter of clean renewable energy.
However, the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, under the Liberal government, decided that this wasn't worth pursuing and that the first successful project in the history of harnessing tidal power in the Bay of Fundy should be stopped.
As a Nova Scotian and as somebody who cares about getting our province off coal.... Our province is the second-largest generator of electricity from coal, Alberta being the first, and we've already heard from my colleague Mr. Kmiec that most of that generation in Alberta will be ending soon. That would leave Nova Scotia as the largest generator of electricity from coal. More than 50% of our electricity is generated from coal, and it's not the good old Cape Breton coal that we all used to get a lot of jobs out of in Nova Scotia. It's coal that is open-pit mined in Colombia and shipped to Nova Scotia to those coal-powered generating plants.
Our premier, Tim Houston, has been very vocal about, what I'd call, his incredulity as to why this determination was made. In fact, DFO never even told the public or the company why they refused to allow this project to go forward and just used its excessive power under the Fisheries and Oceans Act. The CEO of this company said that the department wouldn't show Sustainable Marine the evidence behind the claims that they were going to harm fish in some way.
However, they did approve every other project that went to the ocean floor, which apparently didn't harm fish. I can tell you, as a former fisheries critic for my party and as somebody who has 7,000 commercial fishermen in my riding, there's a lot of important seafood on the ocean floor—lobsters, crab and all of those things, so it's not just fish that swim—or, as we call them, pelagic fish, but it's crustaceans that move on the floor.
Therefore, if turbines were to harm the fishery, they would have harmed the fishery in the Bay of Fundy, which is quite lucrative in terms of lobster. For some reason, though, the arbitrariness of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans kicked in. The company has given enormous amounts of information on this.
Premier Tim Houston, at the time of the announcement in the spring, said, “Shame on the federal government.” He posted it in a video. It was important that he speak publicly on it. This is a quote from the premier:
“You likely know from the media that the federal government is excited about reaching into your pocket and taking your money in the name of a carbon tax,” he continues, “...yet when faced with real opportunities, to make meaningful positive change...like the one Sustainable Marine is creating, it's shut down.”
Now, I don't know what the ultimate objective of the government is in shutting down an important power project like this. I don't know how the federal government wants Nova Scotia to get off of coal if we can't build a natural gas pipeline. In Bill C-69 they made sure we could not get one to come to Nova Scotia with good ethical Albertan natural gas to replace coal, which would reduce our carbon emissions in Nova Scotia by half. If we can't harness the power of the tides in Nova Scotia, one of the greatest untapped energy sources in the world....
Also, it's really quite ironic, given that the government has introduced Bill C-49, which started second reading this week in the House, and which gives a new mandate to the Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Board as well as the Newfoundland and Labrador Offshore Petroleum Board and sets in C-69-type processes for the development of offshore oil and gas in Atlantic Canada. That means none will happen, because that's the intent of Bill C-69.
Also, it imposes that same rigorous, lengthy, excessive and bureaucratic process on wind energy in the ocean. Obviously DFO will use its ability, because under Bill C-49 DFO has the ability to say no. If they think somewhere in the future, down the way, 50 years from now, they might put a marine protected area, perhaps maybe sort of in that area that you're thinking of putting wind power in, they're not going to let you do it. They have a veto power to do that. That's the kind of excessive overreach on power that the government is doing.
On top of that, there's the inconsistency of the government in putting its message forward saying it believes we should have clean renewable energy, yet when we have the opportunity to do it, it either uses the power of DFO to kill the project or it uses the power of imposing C-69-type bureaucratic processes on the future approval of wind and tidal power projects in Atlantic Canada.
What are we supposed to do but continue to import coal if this government says one thing and does another? It says it wants us on renewable resources, but it puts barriers in the way of actually producing and creating those renewable resources—clean zero-emission energy projects that are right here on the coast of my province, Nova Scotia.
It's incredibly disappointing, and I would ask that this committee seriously consider this motion and the trail of contradictory decisions by this government of saying one thing and doing another when it comes to Atlantic Canada and renewable resources.
I know some of my colleagues have a few things they would like to add as well, because my colleagues—on this side anyway—have shown a great deal of interest in all of the issues around Nova Scotia, certainly the ones I'm passionate about, including all of the issues around the ocean and the issues around the fishery.
It's mind-boggling that DFO would stop such a renewable resource project.
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
12:45 p.m.
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
I'd just like to clarify the process. We have this notice of motion, and I understand that Mr. Perkins has now tabled it with the committee and it's on notice.
12:45 p.m.
NDP
Taylor Bachrach NDP Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC
It was on notice before, so we have had the 48 hours and we can now debate it.
12:45 p.m.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal Francis Scarpaleggia
We actually don't need it because we're technically doing future business.
12:45 p.m.
NDP
