Good evening, Mr. Chairman and members of the subcommittee. My name is Dave Collyer. I'm president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. We represent Canada's upstream oil and gas sector, and our members produce more than 90% of Canada's petroleum resources.
I certainly welcome the opportunity to provide our perspective on Bill C-38, part 3, responsible resource development.
This bill is extremely important to our industry. It's going to help attract the investment required by the oil and gas sector to create Canadian jobs, economic growth, and energy security in an increasingly competitive global market. I want to really emphasize the global competitive environment in which we operate. LNG is perhaps a good example—a tremendous opportunity, we believe, to export natural gas from Canada's west coast. But our competitors in Australia and other countries are not standing still, nor are markets necessarily waiting for us to supply those particular markets. We need to be competitive, and a key part of that is the regulatory regime under which we operate.
In our view, the bill sets out a framework for legislative change that will significantly improve the regulatory review process for natural resource development projects without compromising Canada's strong record of responsible environmental performance and environmental outcomes.
Our industry is the largest single private sector investor in Canada. We invest over $50 billion each year, and we employ well over half a million Canadians. We foresee opportunities to maintain or in fact increase that level of investment going forward. In fact, there are over $120 billion in oil sands development projects in the queue. However, we will only attract that investment and the investment capital required to grow our industry if we're internationally competitive.
As we all know, capital is mobile. I think it's rather sobering that a variety of domestic and international authorities, including the International Energy Agency and the World Economic Forum, have characterized our current regulatory system as being overly complex, redundant and open-ended, and a significant threat to Canada's ability to attract the capital necessary to develop our abundant natural resources.
The current regulatory process has often led to project delays and cost escalation, which both defer and reduce the employment and revenue benefits accruing to Canadians from these investments. In some cases, projects have unfortunately been cancelled or deferred for many years without any discernible improvement in environmental performance or outcomes. In our view, that is clearly not in the public interest. CAPP is very encouraged by the measures within Bill C-38, which, if properly implemented, will address many of those issues.
We strongly disagree with those who allege that Bill C-38 will result in lower environmental standards or turn back the clock on environmental regulation. The existing regulatory processes, to review and approve, or not, industrial activity in Canada have developed incrementally over many years, resulting in a patchwork of requirements that are confusing, overlapping, often conflicting, and ultimately uncertain. The existing process undermines competitiveness, negatively impacts project economics, and does not contribute to better environmental outcomes. More regulation is not necessarily better regulation; in fact, it's often quite the opposite.
From our perspective, the key elements of Bill C-38 are the following.
First is one project, one review, with review by the best-placed regulator by enabling equivalency and substitution. In our view, that will remove unnecessary overlap and duplication, and it certainly does not mean a lower standard of environmental review.
Second is significant consolidation of regulatory review bodies for those projects that are under federal oversight, which, from our perspective, is a sound, common sense reform—a risk-based regulatory review process that focuses resources and effort on higher potential impact projects and in fact reallocates resources in a manner that should improve environmental outcomes for those projects that have the potential to have a higher environmental impact.
The final key element is greater clarity and predictability in the regulatory review process, specifically in regard to timelines, which is going to provide much greater certainty to project proponents in terms of the costs and resources they need to devote to the regulatory review process and should shorten the timeline between the identification of a project opportunity and the point at which a proponent can make a final investment decision, thereby reducing uncertainty and complexity in the overall decision-making process.
I have just a couple of thoughts on implementation. I'd like to emphasize that the benefits that arise from this legislation outlined in Bill C-38 will only be realized if this legislation and supporting regulations are effectively and efficiently implemented in a manner that delivers the intended outcomes. It will be important to ensure that adequate federal resources are dedicated to fully implement the intended regulatory changes on an aligned, whole-of-government basis, and additionally, that collaboration and alignment among federal, territorial, and provincial government departments and agencies will be critical to delivering the intended outcomes, particularly as they relate to equivalency and substitution.
To conclude, in our view, we must continue to grow Canada's resource sector for the benefit of all Canadians, to provide jobs, economic growth, and substantial revenue to Canadian governments. As an industry, we will continue to do this responsibly and with a commitment to continue performance improvement under environmental policy and regulation that will deliver the outcomes Canadians expect and that compare very favourably with those of other countries with whom we're competing for investment capital.
We look forward to less but better process that will deliver more jobs, a stronger economy, and responsible environmental performance. In our view, Bill C-38 represents a practical, efficient, and effective framework for change that is long overdue, and from our perspective, it is time to act on this legislation.
Thank you, and I look forward to your questions.