Evidence of meeting #111 for Natural Resources in the 44th Parliament, 1st Session. (The original version is on Parliament’s site, as are the minutes.) The winning word was wells.
A video is available from Parliament.
Liberal
Julie Dabrusin Liberal Toronto—Danforth, ON
I'd like to clarify something.
I've never seen a situation like this in which committee members want to discuss what can be included in a study suggested in a motion without adopting the motion in question. There's no indication on their part that they have no interest in discussing it. Can they let us know if they're ready for the vote on the motion? That way, we can hear from experts who can give us their point of view, and we can find out everything we need to know about it.
Bloc
The Vice-Chair Bloc Mario Simard
The clerk is telling me that this is more a matter of debate at this point. That's a very good point. We can come back to this.
I invite Mr. Dreeshen to continue his remarks.
Conservative
Earl Dreeshen Conservative Red Deer—Mountain View, AB
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that.
We don't see in the main motion that it talks about any recognition of what that money was allocated for, and I think that is significant. Of course, that would indicate that maybe this government isn't paying attention to that, or maybe it just felt that taking this blunt instrument and hitting Alberta with it would be the thing to do at this particular point in time, and failed to understand—and I do agree on this part—that if we were to bring in the experts, they would make this government look ridiculous, because it is not paying attention to this. There is that fact.
Probably we will all get a chance to vote on whether or not we want to bring experts in to make this government look ridiculous. I don't think it will be a problem; however, here is where the problem lies. We have all of the misinformation that is being presented by the government. We have a lack of acknowledgement of where this comes from. However, that isn't going to change. We've heard the comments this morning in the discussion and previously as to why Liberal members think this is such a great idea—so that isn't going to change. They will have people come in to talk, and I'm sure they are great witnesses, but they'll talk about something that is completely unrelated to the $137 million. However, that's not the point. The point is, throw this into the mix and see where we go from there.
I really want to go back again to the actual main motion part, and I'll come back to what first nations were asking and hoping for.
It says, “The Standing Committee of Natural Resources begin a...study on the impact of this failure”. That's why they have to keep a preamble in, because of this failure they are speaking of and “to clean [up] these wells”. Therefore, they have to say, well, no, they don't care about all the abandoned and orphaned wells all over the country; it's just this, because, of course, there were some dollars associated with it—which is an argument, but that's it.
Again, we had previously, with Mr. Simard, taken away the “in Alberta” part to try to make it a pan-Canadian argument, at least.
Again, they still speak to “the impacts of the pollution from not cleaning up abandoned and orphaned wells”, which my colleague, Mr. Patzer, so eloquently described as the difference. If people don't know that, maybe that is again a good thing for us to understand. We have five meetings to deal with this. We could maybe look at the AER's reports and maybe have the Government of Alberta present something to this committee. That's five meetings about how the government doesn't know that it has a responsibility for first nations. Some days I think I wouldn't mind pointing it out for that length of time, but I think it's obvious just in the fact that it was presented this way.
To be perfectly honest, after we had the discussion last week, I believe, on this, I honestly felt that we were going to come here, and the government was going to say that maybe this motion wasn't that important after all, and that maybe they should just take this off, because they were going to look so stupid if they pushed this thing forward. However, that was not the case, and here we are taking a look at this in that way.
It says, “Companies who abandon wells and fail to pay for their cleanup negatively impact provincial taxpayers and municipalities”. That is true, but there are processes in place that deal with that. There always have been. To hear, as Ms. Jones mentioned earlier, about how you would expect Alberta.... They don't have a track record of environmentalism.... That is so much nonsense.
I've mentioned before—and Mrs. Goodridge was speaking earlier about this—that when you go to Fort McMurray and take a look at the the mining site that is there, and then you turn 180 degrees to look at the forest that is there, you think, boy, look at what they're doing. They're taking these terrible forests and they're digging them up. No: They're digging them up and making them then into beautiful forests.
There's a 40-year responsibility for the companies before their responsibility is released. I've been up there. After 20 years, you can't tell the difference. There are no scars. There's nothing like that. It is an amazing type of technology to help in the removal of the natural oil spill, that is, the oil sands, in preventing it from getting to the rivers. I mean, that's the reality of it.
The point is, that's what reclamation is. I know that my good friend, Mr. Angus, has spoken a lot about mining sites. That's what this is—it's a mining site. If you can find a way to reclaim it, then you would think that the people there should stand up and be proud of it. I'm sure that in mining, whether it's in Ontario, Quebec, the Maritimes or wherever, they are proud of those, where they can make that difference.
Albertans are proud of what they do and the difference they make. We could go down the list of things that we excel at on a worldwide level. I hearken back to when I first got involved in politics, which is now just a little over 16 years ago. One of the guys came to me and said not to let anybody tell me that there's anything wrong with Canada's oil and gas industry. The only country that comes close to the environmental record of Canadian oil and gas is Australia. The only reason they do is that they are implementing the processes that Alberta has. That's what we're dealing with here.
When we talk about the great technology and the opportunities to sell this around the world, what we've been met with by this government is that it doesn't really want to do that. It doesn't want oil and gas development, if there's any way that it can stop that. The world is going this way, we hear from the minister, and we hear this from other folks who have something to say on the issue. That, too, is nonsense.
All that does is take the hundreds of billions of dollars of potential investment and put it into other countries.
I was just speaking with a gentleman who does business around the world. They're frustrated, but their next project is going to be in Kazakhstan. There's going to be oil coming out of there. It is a Canadian company, but it could have been done by Canadian workers. It could have been done so that the tax dollars go to the federal government, the provincial government and the municipal governments.
That could have been it, but our mindset is that the only things we want to have in the future are windmills and solar panels. That's how we will create that intermittent power that we need. I've heard people say that once we've developed this massive battery storage concept, then we'll be able to deal with that.
In the meantime, the rest of the world, even if they think it's what they want to do and even if they believe that having those particular types of renewables is a good idea, is still using oil and gas. They are cranking it up in other countries. They are still using their coal.
They're cranking it up, because they know that's how they can manufacture.... They know that's how they can get things done. They know that's how they can compete against people such as ourselves, who have handcuffed our industries. They just run over us, so of course, when we say.... Why don't we think about where the future is going to be? We can get where people believe we should be, or could be in decades from now, by becoming more efficient and everything else.
In the meantime, shutting our industry down.... This is just one shot across the bow. I mean, we see this constantly. Us shutting our industry down is simply going to mean that the rest of the world is going to take up the slack. You know, I sometimes think about eventual failures of governments, eventual failures of nations, eventual failures of economic systems. If we lose control over our natural resources, and some other country says, “You know what, we'll take over,” right now, it's simply as investments, so there's competition at least. If you have no more control, and you think that now we'll just stand back, and we'll have another motion at some committee meeting to say, “Oh, that's not a good idea,” well, we won't be able to control that. I think that's one of the main issues.
I'd like just now to go back to the first nations rehabilitation program. This report came from January 29 of this year. Basically, what they're talking about.... I'll read some of it. The Government of Alberta developed the liability management framework to mitigate the risk associated with aging infrastructure and site rehabilitation. With this, it confirmed funding to first nations and Métis communities. There is a list. I'm not going to go through all of it, because I know there are others who would like to make comments.
They go through all of the different first nations and the value of the projects for those communities. One close to myself is Ermineskin Cree—there was $2.6 million for that community. For Louis Bull it was $1.7 million. These are just some of the ones that are close. For Sunchild it was $1.2 million.
This goes through where these many millions of dollars aren't going to be spent. The government chose, for political grandstanding, to pull that money out. Now, it has to live with the fact that it pulled it out of first nations communities. It has to live with the fact that first nations, with the Alberta government's assistance, were trying to build up their capability and to manage these wells and the cleanups on their land.
First nations did not wish to be shell companies, where somebody simply says, “Oh, I think we can check off a box that says that we have a first nation running this,” and then have others come in and reap the benefits. That's not what first nations in my province do. It's not what other first nations...because I've spent many years on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development in my time here. That's not what they do. They look after themselves and what is needed there. They don't allow a government to come in and say, “Oh, we need to check off a box that says that we have first nations participation.” I think you're starting to see that now when the discussions are coming in place.
If not, I will tell you that in my discussions with first nations financial organizations, they are livid about the fact that they are being short-shrifted on this, simply for this government to check off a box and to say, “Oh yeah, we had this first nation working with us.”
That's not what's happening in Alberta, because there is a respect for the industriousness of first nations people, certainly in my province, and I think that's very critical.
Mr. Speaker, I'm going to close on this, but I do want to leave us with some of this information, especially when I'm speaking about the first nations. This is from the Treaty 8 First Nations in Alberta and the office of the Grand Chief, in December of last year, to honourable Minister Wilkinson, and it says:
On December 11, 2023, the Chiefs of Treaty 6, 7 and 8, met to discuss the First Nations Site Rehabilitation Program...and the $134-million Site Rehabilitation monies unspent by the Alberta Government, and the request of the Government of Canada for these dollars to be returned as savings, instead of being invested to achieve their intended purpose. The same group of Chiefs have unanimously agreed the federal government should allow the $134 million FSRP monies that the province currently holds to be placed into the FNSR Program, providing much needed funds to continue the successful work that has been accomplished by us—
They're already working. It's not like it's ground zero and we're starting this up. They said:
If we continue status quo, both the provincial government, the federal governments and industry would be leaving over 3,000 sites to be abandoned or reclaimed on First Nations lands and territories.
Three thousand.... Maybe we could take a look at what the preamble says. This is what they are talking about. If the chiefs who sat down and talked with me in my office got a chance to explain what they think of this government and its heavy-handed approach, that might be a very interesting meeting, but it's going to be an embarrassment for this government.
As I've said, there's still time. They could pull, change or get rid of the preamble and talk about just learning something about what abandoned and orphaned wells are. If that's all it said, I think it would be a much easier plan and then maybe.... We probably would point it out anyway, but maybe this government wouldn't be so embarrassed for the actions that it is placing on the table. If members are simply trying to set up some narratives for during the carbon tax election, to say, well, look at what we tried to do, and these guys didn't care.... If that's what their thoughts are, I guess that could be debated at another time.
Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal George Chahal
Thank you, Mr. Dreeshen.
We'll now go to our next speaker, Mr. Falk.
Go ahead, sir.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I want to thank my colleagues, Mr. Patzer, Mr. Dreeshen and Ms. Goodridge, for their phenomenal job in explaining the situation that we have before us.
I want to speak to the amended motion and highlight a few things. I find it very disingenuous for a Toronto member of Parliament to put forward a motion—
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
I have a point of order. I've sat very politely and listened to the snowflakes going on about how mean we are to Alberta when we're talking about federal money being spent, but I've also seen how they can't have this conversation without continually denigrating people from other regions.
If they don't like the motion, they can vote against the motion, but these cheap attacks on parliamentarians who are doing their job regarding federal money.... They may not like that federal money is being considered accountable, but federal money is accountable, and that's the role of our committee.
I ask you, Chair, to ask these members to stop with these cheap personal attacks against colleagues.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal George Chahal
Thank you, Mr. Angus, for your point of order.
Colleagues, I think this is a good time to remind you all to focus on your debate and not target other colleagues around the table here. Please try to focus your debate on the amended motion at hand, so we can have a productive conversation on how to proceed with it and whether or not you believe there are benefits to it. Thank you.
I see Mrs. Goodridge online with her hand up.
Is it on a point of order, Mrs. Goodridge?
Conservative
Laila Goodridge Conservative Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, AB
Yes.
I appreciate Mr. Angus's point of order, in some capacity. Frankly, though, it wasn't a point of order. In doing his point of order, he actually proceeded to name-call Conservative members, which I think goes against the very spirit of this.
I would ask for an apology from him. He continues to name-call.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal George Chahal
Thank you, Mrs. Goodridge.
If his point of order wasn't a point of order, yours wasn't either.
Look, colleagues—
NDP
Charlie Angus NDP Timmins—James Bay, ON
I have a point of order.
Did I say “special snowflakes” or just snowflakes in general?
NDP
Liberal
The Chair Liberal George Chahal
Mr. Angus....
Once again, colleagues, let's focus on the debate, not on any personal attacks on individuals or parties. I know there's partisan strife around the table, but let's try to focus on the conversation at hand and debate the motion and the merits of the motion.
I hope that clears the air and we can get focused back on the work Canadians sent us to do at this committee. Thank you.
Mr. Falk, go ahead.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chairman, for those comments.
If the member who represents Timmins—James Bay had listened to the entirety of my comments, he would have realized there was context to what I was saying.
A Liberal member of Parliament from Toronto made a motion that has to do with Alberta, then presented a preamble in the motion that was very denigrating to the entire province of Alberta and the industry it so proudly represents. I think that was inappropriate.
It wasn't an attack on anything. It was to give geographical perspective to this motion, and also to the impact that it—
October 23rd, 2024 / 6:25 p.m.
Liberal
Liberal
Julie Dabrusin Liberal Toronto—Danforth, ON
I'm wondering if the Conservative Party's point of view is that Toronto MPs do not have the strength or ability to speak about federal funding to provinces. Perhaps they might want to make sure Torontonians know their feeling about people from that city.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal George Chahal
Thank you, Ms. Dabrusin.
I'm sure my colleague Mr. Falk will get into further debate and explain the rationale for what he stated or what he intends to state.
I'll go back to you, Mr. Falk.
Conservative
Ted Falk Conservative Provencher, MB
Thank you, Mr. Chair.
The point I was going to make is this: The Liberal government, throughout the entirety of the past nine years, has sought to cause division in Canada such that I've never seen before in my lifetime coming from any other government. Instead of promoting nation-building projects and trying to create cohesiveness across our country with those projects, the Prime Minister, in particular, has sought to divide Canadians on every single level, whether it's economically, culturally or geographically. He's sought to create division among Canadians, instead of creating unity. Often, this Prime Minister has said that the fact that we have diversity is our strength here in Canada. I want to unequivocally say that it's not diversity that is our strength. It's our unity that is the strength we have here in Canada. When we present things in such a fashion and take swipes at other provinces, it doesn't create unity. I think it creates more division. However, this seems to be a hallmark or characteristic of this Liberal government.
I think the information presented in the preamble.... I have issues with some of the wording in the actual motion, as well, but my issue is primarily with the preamble. I don't think it's necessary that it be there. We've heard from previous speakers that, in fact, it's recommended that preambles not be included in motions precisely for the reasons we're experiencing here at committee. It actually creates problems and points of debate. We're not even debating the motion itself. We're debating the preamble. Often, it's easiest just to remove it. There's been an unwillingness on the part of the Liberals' parliamentary secretary to do that.
In the absence of that, let's talk about the accuracy of the information she's providing in the preamble. She makes a comment in the very first bullet point about “abandoned and orphaned wells in Alberta”. Well, abandoned and orphaned are two different things. I don't know whether, on the other side of this committee room, individuals understand the difference between abandoned and orphaned wells. The comment later in that bullet point says that they're “polluting farmland, waterways, and air”.
The interesting thing is that it's just a comment made. One thing I've learned in my nine years as a parliamentarian is this: Just because a Liberal says something is so doesn't mean it is so. Just because the comment is made that—
Liberal
The Chair Liberal George Chahal
You can use a point of order if there's a point of order. However, if there is clarification required, that's something one can ask for in debate. If it is a point of order, I'm happy to....
You can say that it's a point of order, and we can go from there.
Liberal
Julie Dabrusin Liberal Toronto—Danforth, ON
I have a point of order.
In the first case, I don't believe I've heard a motion from the members opposite seeking to amend the motion we have here. They've just been talking a blue streak for a very long time. I guess it's about the witness list they would like.
That would be my first piece.
Also, I'm curious as to whether they're taking the position that we should not be studying the impact of these orphaned wells. That seems to be something that's up in the air.
Liberal
The Chair Liberal George Chahal
Thank you.
I'm not sure, Ms. Dabrusin, if that is a point of order. There are a number of questions you posed there, which the member may get to. The member may bring something forward through an amendment at some point.
We'll listen intently as we hear from the member.