Natural Resources Committee on Oct. 30th, 2023

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Well, just on that point of order—

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Are you doing a point of order on a point order?

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

On his point of order, yes, absolutely, because I had the floor. I was speaking. My light was on. I was the one who was speaking. My colleague was so kind as to pour me a glass of water. You know, we work collaboratively on this side, Mr. Chair.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I have a point of order.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Mr. Patzer, we have a point of order.

Mr. Angus, go ahead on the point of order.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

I just want to hear the points of order, and Mr. Patzer continues to try to take the floor.

Can we just hear the points of order and get back to business?

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Once again, colleagues, I've stated this many times this morning and into this afternoon. When one member does have the floor, let's let them finish their point of order before we proceed so that I can hear their point of order. Let's not get into debate within our points of order.

I will ask you, colleagues, to have just one member speaking into their own mike, not multiple, because that does cause significant challenges for our interpreters, who need one person at a time to speak. They are doing a tremendous job interpreting our debate in both official languages, so out of courtesy to our interpreters, let's make sure it's one person at a time and not two individuals speaking into one mike, okay?

I think that addresses the points of order.

Mr. Patzer, the floor is back to you.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Yes, I had the floor. I did not concede the floor. It's been mine since I started speaking, and I thank you for making that point.

Just quickly, if I may, Mr. Chair, I'm going to say hello to my son. He's back home. He's sick today, so he's home from school, unfortunately, and he is watching the natural resources committee. I just want to say hello to my son.

I hope you get better soon, buddy.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Knowing kids watch debates really points out how important it is for his future.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Exactly. He's going to get a chance to learn today how important Canada's energy future is to our generation, to his generation and to the generation that is going to follow after his and how our country is going to work.

It's an important opportunity for us to discuss the division of powers in this country as well, because Bill C-69, as the Supreme Court of Canada clearly ruled, has trampled all over that. That is why there is a priority and a precedence on our side to see that we deal with Bill C-49 first, because it directly quotes and references Bill C-69 no less than 33 times.

It is causing some grief for members on the other side that we keep talking about Bill C-69, but, because they are so incredibly linked together, we continue to hammer home this point. We want to make sure that people understand that, in order for us to properly get the best result for Canadians, we are going to start with Bill C-49, which means that we have to deal with Bill C-69 and, as the amendment that was moved states at the very end in point 2—it's a very simple line that we have at the bottom—we complete consideration of Bill C-49.

What that is doing is ordering Bill C-49 to be first. Deal with Bill C-69, as part of it ties in with Bill C-49, but we are going to complete deliberation on Bill C-49 and, at that point, at the end of the amendment, point number 3 would then be the a), b), c), d), e), f), g), h) and i) that was part of the original motion. It includes the original wording and lettering of the original motion, but it includes direction to have an order prioritizing Bill C-49 in advance. It's a very substantive amendment, and I really appreciate the wording that we have in it here, which we came up with to make sure that it was compliant and in order.

It might be worth going over that one more time. At the start of the motion, point 1 is going to be that first we undertake the study on Bill C-69. It references in the opening dialogue about the need to do Bill C-49. We're already establishing that those two bills are going to be part of the motion.

We're going to say that we first undertake the following study on Bill C-69:

1. First undertake the following study on Bill C-69: “Pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the committee undertake a study of the Supreme Court of Canada’s ruling that Bill C-69, An Act to enact the Impact Assessment Act and the Canadian Energy Regulator Act, to amend the Navigation Protection Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, is unconstitutional; for the purposes of this study, the committee: (a) hold at least 5 meetings, (b) invite the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources and the Minister of the Environment and Climate Change to appear for one hour each, (c) report its findings and recommendations to the House and, (d) pursuant to Standing Order 109, request that the government table a comprehensive response to the report.”, then 2. Complete its consideration of Bill C-49.

That's effectively—if I'm allowed to use the term—killing two birds with one stone here, because, when we deal with Bill C-49, we have to deal with Bill C-69. We have to start with BIll C-69 to make sure that Bill C-49 is compliant with that law that is now in place. It has been largely unconstitutional since its implementation, which the government was warned about back then and continues to be warned about now.

This is why we want to prioritize the order of the bills that we have here in this amendment.

There are a few parts to Mr. Sorbara's motion that are still going to have to be addressed and dealt with, possibly in a subamendment.

Before we get to that, Mr. Chair, I think we need to really discuss the impacts that this will have if we don't deal with Bill C-69.

I have read a little bit about Saskatchewan and their response to the reference case and the importance of that. I'll just remind members that at no point in history has a government ignored a reference case. They've always acted upon it and prioritized it. Let's take Saskatchewan as an example. We hear a lot about the government doing consultations and how they've been very engaging with people. Well, only about 15% of Saskatchewanians have heard of the just transition. I would suspect that if the other 85% knew what was happening and what was going on, people would have a lot of concerns.

In particular, as we have seen and heard, the government's initial attempt at a just transition of coal workers substantively and spectacularly failed. I'll get to that in a bit. People have seen their energy prices already go up. That has already happened. At this point, the shuttering of our coal plants has not fully happened just yet, but we have seen energy prices increase as the government has implemented very strong anti-energy development legislation.

Take the cost of the carbon tax alone, for example, on energy production in Saskatchewan. I've heard workers at the coal station talk about how the carbon tax might put them out of a job far in advance of 2030. This is because of the excessive costs that will be associated with producing power as the power plant is phased out and winds down. That escalating cost gets thrown on top, onto the Crown corporation SaskPower.

Then you have the case of Swift Current, where I live. They buy the power from SaskPower. In a sense, you have a doubling of costs and regulation here that is causing this issue of affordability of energy for folks. We've heard the government's own regulations speak to the fact that the people who will be disproportionately impacted are seniors living on a fixed income and single mothers. That was right in the government's own regulations, and yet they are plowing ahead with this legislation that is problematic and causing massive cost overruns for people.

In fact, we just heard on Friday that the government is going to put a pause on the carbon tax in one area of the country because of the issue of cost, but yet we've constantly been told that people receive more than they pay, so therefore it shouldn't be a problem. Well, clearly it is. This is why people are concerned with Bill C-50, Bill C-49 and Bill C-69. This is why getting to Bill C-69 first will be of the utmost importance to people.

In Saskatchewan the working population is 598,000 people, give or take. There were over 43,000 construction jobs, 32,000 manufacturing jobs, and 25,800 agricultural jobs. In forestry, mining and gas there were 19,700 jobs, in utilities about 8,500, in wholesale and retail trade 98,000, and in transportation and warehousing about 30,000 jobs. The potential just transition job impacts are 10,432 direct jobs and 131,500 indirect jobs. A lot of that can be attributed and traced back to the ripple effect of Bill C-69.

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Mr. Patzer, we have a point of order from Ms. Lapointe.

[Viviane LaPointe, Liberal, Sudbury, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Member Patzer has raised some relevant issues on the need to hear from Canadians on the additional study that they're proposing in their amendment. I would suggest that the original motion also has some compelling reasons on why we need to hear from Canadians. I'm certainly ready to vote on their amendment. I would expect that my colleagues are as well.

I would simply like to ask the member to consider bringing this to a vote.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you for your point of order, Ms. Lapointe.

Mr. Patzer, if you're at the point of bringing it to a vote, bring it to a vote. If you're still debating, please continue.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Thank you, Chair.

I thank my colleague for her respectful intervention there.

No, I've been working toward.... I've been speaking off the motion and the amendment here. I think it would be important, Mr. Chair, that, first of all....

I'm working on a subamendment here, looking at the original motion. When we order Bill C-49 and Bill C-69 ahead of Bill C-50, obviously it will cause some issues, I think, with the original motion as it is. I'm just kind of working toward that subamendment that I think will be needed to address a few things here.

I just wanted to finish a thought I had about the impact on jobs in Saskatchewan. You know, 41% of our available generating capacity comes from gas, and 26% comes from coal. We're already looking at close to 70% of our energy capacity being gas and coal. Yes, we have the just transition legislation in front of the committee, but it still doesn't lay out a plan or a path to actually do something to replace that. It's just a plan to have a plan. That's essentially what that bill is.

I think this speaks to why the priority and the precedent should be given to Bill C-49 first and foremost, so that we can deal with that issue. If we're going to change the generating capacity in Saskatchewan, we need the regulatory certainty to be dealt with, which the government is trying to ignore in Bill C-69. If we don't deal with that, how will any provinces, for that matter, whether it be Saskatchewan or Alberta or whether it be the Maritimes, as we're seeing with the Atlantic accord, deal with that?

Bill C-69 clearly needs to be the priority for this committee. That is the point we have been trying to make all along here. I think it will be important to get to those bills first, to Bill C-49 and Bill C-69, ahead of Bill C-50.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Mr. Angus, go ahead on a point of order.

[Charlie Angus, NDP, Timmins—James Bay, ON]

On a point of order, Chair, it's now clear that the Conservatives will do anything to filibuster Bill C-50.

I had asked earlier about whether or not we have the resources until, I think you said, 2:30 p.m. Do we have resources to go beyond so that we can finally put an end to this filibuster and get back to the work that has been laid out in the motion?

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Yes. Currently, we do have further resources to go beyond 2:30 p.m., to 3 p.m. If we have any other further updates, or if it is the will of the committee to continue on beyond 3 p.m., we will try to get additional resources to make that happen.

But it is the will of the committee, so I will keep proceeding until we get further guidance or if we have any further questions from members.

Go ahead.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

On a point of order, I'm just trying to understand: Is that a request from the chair for us to put in a request? How do we go about requesting the additional resources? I'd like clarification on that before we continue.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

As mentioned, we do have further resources. If it is the will of the committee to continue, to keep sitting to discuss this important motion and amendment, the committee should advise me so that we can make those appropriate requests as well.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

Then I think we should make that request now so that we can get the resources in order.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you, Mr. Aldag.

On the point of order, that is noted.

We will go to Mr. Patzer.

[Jeremy Patzer, Conservative, Cypress Hills—Grasslands, SK]

Oh, thank you.

Mr. Chair, I was speaking about the fact that Saskatchewan relies on natural gas and coal for the majority of its baseload power right now. Interestingly enough, on their website for the Government of Saskatchewan—it actually lists this on the SaskPower portion of that website—you can go through and you can see where the province, within the previous 24 hours, got its energy from. You can see where all the kilowatt hours were produced and where they came from. Routinely, about 70% of that was drawn from natural gas and coal. The third highest would be hydro power there. We have a couple of hydro dams in Saskatchewan. Unfortunately, I don't know that we would actually be able to build and complete one single hydro dam in the amount of time that the government is trying to phase out fossil fuels.

We've heard about timelines for approvals. That's part of the problem with Bill C-69, and now we have the largely unconstitutional part with what the Supreme Court made their ruling on. There's also the practicality of what we are going to replace the generation of gas and coal with.

We look at how long it has taken for a few hydro projects around the country to be complete. We're talking decades. Yet the government has this plan that by 2035 there will not be any natural gas. Natural gas would be basically banned at that point in time. Coal is suppose to be gone by 2030. We're seeing some difficulty around the country in trying to get the reliability factor for wind and solar. We've seen the blocking of new technologies such as tidal power already. Now that wasn't in Saskatchewan where the tidal project was moved, of course. It's a landlocked province. I'm just speaking generally about around the country how that's going to work and how that's going to play out.

With wind and solar, solar regularly accounts for less than one per cent of the power usage and energy consumption in Saskatchewan. Wind is regularly less than 10%. It's regularly a single-digit number. Sometimes, it goes a little bit higher. Sometimes it's a little bit lower. Specifically, people are concerned about peak usage and peak demand, right?

Now, for those of you who don't follow the weather patterns of Saskatchewan, in the past week, it's been as cold as -15° already and -19° in some areas. I think it's important that people realize that this assertion that you can just throw a heat pump or two on and you'll be good in the middle of winter—I mean, already in October, most heat pumps wouldn't have worked in Saskatchewan. I think it's important that this be noted.

In fact, when I was driving home on Friday after flying home from Ottawa, one of the news talk radio shows in Saskatchewan had a conversation around heat pumps. There are people who do use them up at their cabins. The people who have them speak specifically to how that is a three-season solution, mainly because it can be used as an air conditioner in the summer. You might be able to get some warmth in late May or early May at the cabin. Certainly, September into October you can get a little bit of warmth out of it.

As I said, it's already been close to -20° in Saskatchewan. That's a common occurrence at this time of year. If you look at October, November, December, January, February, March and into April, the majority of the year, you're not even going to be able to use that as a source of heat in your home reliably.

I think that it's important to have that on the table. We talk about the issue of a supposedly just transition and where people are going to get their energy from to heat their homes, to do their laundry, to cool their homes, and we have those severe differences in our temperatures from summer to winter.

We can be in the plus mid-thirties or in the minus mid-thirties, and sometimes you can see that in a span of a week, depending on the time of year. It's important that people have reliable energy, reliable power.

That's why Bill C-49, Bill C-69 and Bill C-50 all need to be discussed, but it's also why Bill C-69 needs to be dealt with first: because Canada's strategic advantage over the last number of decades has been the affordable, reliable, sustainable energy sources that we have in this country.

There are many countries around the world that would be jealous and envious of the situation we have with our abundance in natural resources and also the diversity of ways in which we generate power and our energy. I think it would be important for us to make sure we keep that. Certainly, Bill C-69 has been a barrier to enabling that to continue, because our population continues to grow, which is always a good thing.... It's good to see our population growing, but it also means that we're going to need more energy.

It's interesting to note that it's not going to be very long before, in a province like Quebec, which has a very robust hydro-powered grid, demand is going to outgrow capacity. I'll give credit to Quebec. They do have one of the more robust energy...where's the specific phrase I had here for it? Its grid is one of the most extensive systems in North America. To their credit, that includes the Americans. Also to their credit, they have a very extensive system, but that doesn't change the fact that if we don't have the capacity we need to continue to grow our population, it becomes a problem. That's where Bill C-69 comes into play.

Certainly, the folks in Atlantic Canada want to see growth in their capacity to produce energy, to produce power, and that's why they want to see Bill C-69 dealt with and addressed, but because it's also tied in with Bill C-49, which is obviously the Atlantic accords, that is why we have a motion and an amendment before us here today.

When we talk about what's happened in other provinces.... For example, with the coal transition that supposedly happened, there were thousands of people who at the end of it were put out of work. They were not transitioned to new jobs. We've seen entire towns in Alberta decimated by that. Bill C-50 is the government's attempt at doing this across the entire country, which is why Conservatives talk about the hundreds of thousands of jobs that are going to be lost, eliminated, because we do have a model to go on that the government has tried.

We've heard in other committee studies about how, when there was a transition that was going to happen in fisheries, it just didn't work. Mr. Angus has talked about how workers have been left out in his riding when it comes to plants being shut down or mining projects being closed. I think it's important that this Bill C-69 that has been looming over our country for the last four or five years gets dealt with, gets addressed and gets prioritized.

Mr. Chair, when it comes to a potential subamendment, I think of one thing that would help to make the original motion work.

I'm just going to discuss this out loud here. I'm not officially moving anything. I just want to talk this out quickly. Some of the dates that are trying to be prescribed in this programming motion obviously are going to be problematic.

In order to make sure that this motion works, getting rid of those dates or bumping them down the calendar at least a little bit, for the flexibility of the committee to be able to properly and appropriately deal with the study—I'm just thinking out loud here—removing those dates is probably going to be best.

We want to make sure that we hear from Canadians, from employers, employees, and certainly we'll hear from the private sector unions. We're definitely going to hear from people who aren't in a union, because we have heard from many people that if we talk about what this just transition supposedly is going to do, it's going to drastically impact the work of folks who don't belong to a union.

When we talk about the indirect jobs, that number is huge as well. We have to make sure that it considers those folks.

That's part of why I think putting in rigid timelines in the programming motion is going to be problematic. It also is going to be a barrier to getting the proper ordering of the motion with the amendment in it that my colleague from Lakeland moved. It would be appropriate for us to look at removing that.

With that, Mr. Chair, I'm going to move a subamendment that in section 3, as it's been ordered by my colleague from Lakeland, there be a subamendment that we would remove the reference to the dates in paragraph (a).

Paragraph (a) would read, “That the minister and officials be invited to appear before the committee on Bill C-50”. We'll just leave that open-ended so that we have that flexibility as a committee. Then (b) would say, “That the minister and officials...”. I think we would have to remove (b) all together. Again, that's one that's prescribing. It's programming a set date for officials in there. We haven't even agreed to our witness list yet. We have to do that first before we can start putting dates in there for what point officials should appear.

[Mario Simard, Bloc, Jonquière, QC]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair.

Is my colleague proposing an actual amendment?

Is he thinking out loud again, as he said earlier?

I'd like him to clarify his position. I love going around in circles, and I don't want to a party pooper, but everyone's patience has its limits. If he has a subamendment to propose, then let him do it and spare us his thinking out loud.

[John Aldag, Liberal, Cloverdale—Langley City, BC]

I have a point of order as well.