Subcommittee of the Standing Committee on Finance on Bill C-38 Committee on May 30th, 2012

[Stephen Hazell]

I have a somewhat different view from others. I actually am not as troubled by these proposed changes.

The National Energy Board is a quasi-judicial body, and it does its work in a way that's fair to folks who come before it, I think. I don't like a lot of the decisions from the National Energy Board, but it is an independent body and it has a pretty good process. But at the end of the day, whether or not the Northern Gateway project is approved or not, I think ultimately that is a political decision. So I don't have a problem with the changes to the NEB legislation.

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Do I have time for one brief question, Mr. Chair?

My question is for Mr. Thomas.

We know that mistakes made by industry for these big resource developments.... Say something goes wrong and there is an accident, a spill, and the habitat has to be rehabilitated once it's destroyed. Do you believe, such as our leader does, that the polluter should pay for ruining that, or should the taxpayer foot the bill for rehabilitation?

[Gregory Thomas]

We believe that the—

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

It's pretty simple. Is it the polluter who should pay or the taxpayer?

[Gregory Thomas]

We believe that those who cause the damage should be financially responsible for the damage that they cause. Yes, that's—

[Jamie Nicholls, NDP, Vaudreuil—Soulanges, QC]

Thank you. That confirms our leader's and our party's position. Thank you very much, Mr. Thomas.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blaine Calkins]

Thank you very much.

We now move to Ms. Ambler, for five minutes, please.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and thank you to our panel for being here so late tonight.

My first question is for Mr. Thomas.

The Canadian Energy Research Institute has told us that the economic impact of the oil sands is approximately $2.1 trillion over 25 years. Would you say that delays in the environmental assessment process would affect that number, and in particular, Canadian taxpayers, and if so, how?

I'll end there and let you answer that one first.

[Gregory Thomas]

Yes, absolutely. I think it goes back to what I addressed in my submission, which is that Canada is doing a very bad job of getting relevant information in front of decision-makers about the effects on the environment, the cost to the environment, the cost to the economy, and the sensible ways by which we can address threats to the environment while at the same time providing necessary goods and services to people.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

“Quantifying the damage” is how you described it, I think.

[Gregory Thomas]

Exactly. How much oxygen is being removed from the Fraser River from the silt that flows down from farmers' fields, and how effective are the mitigation factors that are foisted on the people who've farmed the land for 100 years, as one example?

I thought Mr. Hazell's comment about saving Exxon a fortune because delaying the Mackenzie Valley pipeline 40 years got us to the point where natural gas is only worth $2 a gigajoule—

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

It's a certain type of math, right?

[Gregory Thomas]

It was clever, but it actually missed the mark, because we missed many periods of $12 and $16 gigajoule gas that would have created apprenticeships for aboriginal people, that would have built a vital economy, and that would have built a self-sufficient northern Canada.

Ultimately, the environmental assessment—the moratorium that came out of the Berger commission was counterproductive, anti-scientific, and it essentially just served to strengthen the bargaining position of the aboriginal people for a big ownership stake in the Mackenzie Valley pipeline, which was what the whole debate was really about anyway. It wasn't about finding an environmentally sustainable way to build a pipeline, because they did, and that could have been done very quickly. Instead, we destroyed a northern economy and took ourselves out of the game, maybe for the next 50 years, and we used environmental assessment as a tool for other agendas.

I think that's what we don't want to do. In the end we deprived the government of billions of dollars of revenue that could have been used to protect the environment and build the lives and futures of the people of the north. It was a tremendous mistake, and a costly one for taxpayers.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Well said. Thank you.

In a way, you've summarized why our finance minister talks about the importance of one project, one review. Even though environmental assessment is not at the top of his to-do list, he understands, like you, that it's all about jobs and it's all about economic growth. The bottom line is that duplications, delays, and all these types of impediments in the current process are affecting taxpayers and jobs in our country.

As a more general question, I want to address something one of the witnesses yesterday talked about, the BNA Act and the environment. I want to point out that the word “environment” doesn't appear in the BNA Act, but the courts have found subsequently that responsibility for the environment should be shared between federal and provincial governments.

Do you agree that federal, provincial, and territorial governments should share, not duplicate, responsibility for environmental assessments? Would you agree that Bill C-38, part 3, emphasizes sharing, and not the duplication of responsibility?

[Gregory Thomas]

Yes. We need to eliminate duplication and we need to set out the responsibility for different aspects of protecting the environment with a tremendous amount of precision. I don't think anyone would suggest that protection of our oceans should be the responsibility of provincial governments as opposed to federal governments. As we develop environmental protection, clearly delineating who's responsible for what is a tremendous service that leaders at both federal and provincial levels can provide us.

[Stella Ambler, Conservative, Mississauga South, ON]

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Conservative, Blaine Calkins]

Thank you, Mr. Thomas.

Thank you, Ms. Ambler. We have to move on.

Mr. Toone, go ahead for five minutes, please.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

And thank you, witnesses, for staying at a fairly late hour. I appreciate that you're still here.

A pipeline has spilled about 22,000 barrels of oil into the Alberta muskeg. It's a pretty significant environmental disaster. It's certainly going to have an impact on streams and wildlife, and fisheries in particular. The way the Fisheries Act is being modified by this bill talks about “serious harm” and “permanent harm”. I wonder if either Mr. Kneen or Mr. Hazell would like to speak.

This spill—presumably even one as large as this, one of the largest in North American history and one that is going to have an incredible impact—might very well be defined as “temporary” and not really subject to the provisions of the bill. Can we look forward to this kind of environmental disaster wreaking havoc on our fisheries with the way the act is going to be modified under Bill C-38?

[Stephen Hazell]

I share your concern about the changes to the Fisheries Act. It remains to be seen how these terms “serious harm” and “permanent harm” will be defined by the courts. That will take some time. Again, we're going to be faced with a fair amount of uncertainty as we go through that process.

The Fisheries Act we have right now is tried and tested as a piece of legislation, and it does protect fish habitat, through the HADD provisions. It's pretty clear what the scope of it is, and proponents have a pretty good idea of when they're in jeopardy of prosecution and when they're not.

In situations where there may be damage to fish habitat now, proponents will say, “Well, you know, we've got this new law; it's not so strict, maybe we can get away with this. Although we're destroying fish habitat, we're not actually killing fish, so we don't really need to worry.” I would worry that it will be harder to protect.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

I think we're mortgaging our future with the current proposed changes. If I can just quote Jeffrey Hutchings—he's the former chair of the federal government committee on the status of endangered wildlife in Canada. In a recent letter to the Prime Minister, he asserts that the majority of freshwater fish, and up to 80% of 71 freshwater species at risk of extinction, will not be protected with the changes that are before us today. That, in my opinion, is a catastrophe. I don't think these fish will fall under the definition of commercial fish. I don't think they will fall under recreational fish. It's fairly unlikely they fall under aboriginal fisheries.

At the moment, in the Standing committee on Fisheries and Oceans we are looking at how ecosystems can change overnight. Over 10 years, the Great Lakes ecosystem has changed, where a fish that was considered inconsequential is now considered crucial to the food chain of the fish that are currently being harvested. Changes are happening very quickly, especially in the situation of climate change we have today. I don't think the changes being proposed are going to be able to adequately address that. I'm worried that biodiversity is going to be seriously affected. I always understood from childhood that the big fish eats the little fish. You protect all fish, because it's all part of one chain. This bill does not address that, not adequately in the least.

I'm wondering, would you be able to speak to biodiversity? How is that going to be protected, and should we even bother protecting biodiversity?

[Stephen Hazell]

Protection of biodiversity is an important part of assuring overall sustainability of ecosystems. Of course, it's tremendously important. It really is at risk of being lost with the changes to the bill, just because there is going to be much less federal presence in the environmental assessment process. That means there will be much less federal science done in association with environmental assessments. That's one thing that doesn't get talked about very much. Considerable science is generated through environmental assessments that are done federally. People work on these things. It facilitates studies—sometimes by proponents and sometimes by governments. It generates information that proves to be tremendously useful. For example, we know a lot more about the ecology of the Mackenzie Valley because of the work that has gone back to the Berger inquiry, and subsequently a lot of science has been developed. Environmental assessments really assist the scientific. It's mutually reinforcing with ecological science.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

If I may, then, Mr. Kneen, regarding the changes proposed here today, are we going to be in a position to adequately protect the environment against any mishaps that may happen regarding mining? I'm just wondering what should be addressed in Bill C-38 to adequately protect the environment when it comes to the inevitable accidents that are going to happen in mining?

[The Chair, Conservative, Blaine Calkins]

Very briefly, Mr. Kneen.

[Philip Toone, NDP, Gaspésie—Îles-de-la-Madeleine, QC]

In a nutshell.

[Jamie Kneen]

In a nutshell, we need a much more thorough environmental assessment process that is contemplated in this act in order to look at the kinds of contingencies, including economic contingencies—bankruptcies and abandonment of projects—that have caused such grief in the past.