Natural Resources Committee on Feb. 12th, 2024

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

I call this meeting to order.

Welcome to meeting 85 of the House of Commons Standing Committee on Natural Resources.

Pursuant to the order of reference of Tuesday, October 17, 2023, and the adopted motion of Wednesday, December 13, 2023, the committee is resuming consideration of Bill C-49, an act to amend the Canada—Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation Act and the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Resources Accord Implementation Act and to make consequential amendments to other acts.

Regarding the committee's study of Bill C-49, as per the updated memo sent earlier today, I would like to remind members that all amendments, including subamendments, must be submitted in writing and sent to our committee clerk by Wednesday, February 21, 2024, at 4 p.m., eastern time. Should you wish to propose amendments during clause-by-clause consideration, please send the legislative counsel, Marie Danik, your written instructions as soon as possible. She will ensure that amendments are drafted in the proper legal format.

Since today's meeting is taking place in a hybrid format, I would like to make a few comments for the benefit of members and witnesses.

Please wait until I recognize you by name before speaking. For those participating by video conference, click on the microphone icon to activate your mic. Please mute yourself when you are not speaking. For interpretation, for those on Zoom you have the choice at the bottom of your screen of floor, English or French. For those in the room, you can use the earpiece and select the desired channel.

Although this room is equipped with a powerful audio system, feedback events can occur. These can be extremely harmful to interpreters and cause serious injuries. The most common cause of sound feedback is an earpiece worn too close to a microphone. We therefore ask all participants to exercise a high degree of caution when handling the earpieces, especially when your microphone or your neighbour's microphone is turned on. In order to prevent incidents and safeguard the hearing health of the interpreters, I invite participants to ensure that they speak into the microphone into which their headset is plugged and to avoid manipulating the earbuds by placing them on the table, away from the microphone, when they are not in use.

Just as a reminder, all comments should be addressed through the chair. Additionally, screenshots or taking photos of your screen is not permitted.

In accordance with our routine motion, I am informing the committee that all remote participants have completed the required connection tests in advance of the meeting.

Our witnesses for the first hour today are Mr. Kevin Stokesbury, by video conference; from East Coast Environmental Law, Kostantina Northrup, staff lawyer; from Econext, Alex Templeton, chair, by video conference; and from Seafreeze Shoreside, Meghan Lapp, fisheries liaison.

Before we begin with opening statements, I would like to remind everyone that I will be using these two cards. Yellow gives a 30-second warning, and red means the time is up. I will try not to interrupt you mid-sentence, but please try to keep an eye out for me when I use these flashing cards.

Ms. Northrup from East Coast Environmental Law, the floor is yours for five minutes. Please proceed, and welcome.

[Kostantina Northrup, Staff Lawyer, East Coast Environmental Law]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

My organization, East Coast Environmental Law, engages in federal and provincial law reform advocacy on issues that affect environmental health and sustainable development in Atlantic Canada.

We recognize the urgent need for a global transition from fossil fuels to sources of clean and renewable energy, and we know that we need good law in place to facilitate the transition and improve our ability to steward the environment we depend on as we undertake this Herculean task.

We have conducted considerable research on offshore wind regulation, looking at jurisdictions overseas and studying Canada's nascent regimes. We support Bill C‑49 in principle because we understand the benefit of jointly managed federal-provincial regimes for the planning, assessment and authorization of renewable energy projects in offshore Newfoundland and Labrador and offshore Nova Scotia.

We know that this bill reflects the shared aspirations of the Government of Canada, the Government of Newfoundland and Labrador, and the Government of Nova Scotia, and we can appreciate that a lot of hard work and dialogue had to happen to get agreement on the text of the bill as it stands. At the same time, we think there are some changes that need to be made to enable successful, stable and sustainable renewable energy development in the offshore with minimum conflict between ocean users and ecosystem needs.

The most important change we want to see to the bill is the inclusion of requirements for tiered planning and assessment to inform key decision-making stages in the offshore renewable energy regimes. We would also emphasize that those planning and assessment processes must provide meaningful opportunities for public participation.

More specifically, we believe that areas within the offshore should not be open to renewable energy development unless they have first been assessed at a high level through a regional assessment or a strategic environmental assessment. In other words, we believe that calls for bids should not be issued for areas that have not been studied through a regional assessment or a strategic environmental assessment that is focused on the impacts of introducing offshore renewable energy activities.

We also believe that all individual offshore renewable energy projects should undergo a project-specific assessment, whether it be a federal impact assessment or an environmental assessment conducted independently by an offshore energy regulator.

Requiring tiered planning and assessment creates opportunities for public participation and input by stakeholders, like fisheries groups, in the key planning and decision-making stages that occur from the highest levels down to the level of project-specific proposals. Doing so helps to ensure that offshore renewable energy projects are sited in suitable locations, where conflicts with other ocean uses and ecosystem needs are minimized.

Bill C‑49 gestures to the need for tiered planning and assessment by proposing to empower the offshore energy regulators to conduct regional assessments and strategic assessments. The bill also explains how offshore regulation would intersect with project-specific assessments under the Impact Assessment Act. What the bill fails to do is make high-level assessments and project-specific assessments required components of the offshore energy regime.

The bill proposes to give the offshore energy regulators discretionary powers—not clear responsibilities—to conduct regional and strategic assessments, and the bill is silent on whether the regulators can or should conduct project-specific assessments when federal impact assessments are not triggered.

Later this week, we will be submitting a written brief to the committee to describe in more detail the changes we hope to see. They include limiting calls for bids to areas that have undergone a focused regional assessment or a strategic environmental assessment, and they also include requiring project-specific assessments by the offshore energy regulators when proposed renewable energy projects do not trigger the federal impact assessment process. These changes would remove ambiguities from the regimes that have been proposed and help to create regulatory certainty. They would also enable more informed decision-making, and they would support wise and prudent stewardship of offshore resources, including not only our energy resources but also fisheries and the biodiversity of marine ecologies.

Finally, I'll close by noting that although we would like to see a cluster of key changes to the bill, we also support a number of the bill's provisions as they stand. In particular, we welcome enhanced federal and provincial powers to protect marine ecologies, particularly the proposed powers to prohibit offshore petroleum and offshore renewable energy activities in areas that are or may be protected by law as areas for wildlife conservation or protection.

Thank you for this opportunity to address the committee. I welcome the members' questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you for your opening statement.

We'll now go to Kevin Stokesbury, who is here by video conference.

You have the floor, sir, for five minutes.

[Dr. Kevin Stokesbury, Dean of the School for Marine Science and Technology, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, As an Individual]

Thank you for inviting me to speak today.

I would like to talk briefly of my concerns for the fishery and developing wind farm industries of the Atlantic.

First, to briefly introduce myself, I'm a marine biologist and fisheries oceanographer. Born in Nova Scotia, I began working on the coastal fisheries at age 18 for DFO Canada.

I studied the effects of the first tidal power plant in Annapolis Royal on river herring populations for my master's thesis at Acadia University. I examined scallop ecology for my Ph.D. at Université Laval and estimated the impact of the Exxon Valdez oil spill on the Prince William Sound herring fishery at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

For the past 25 years, I have worked on the sea scallop fishery of New England and Canada using an underwater drop camera to film 70,000 square kilometres of sea floor, counting the scallops and examining their habitat. I am the dean of the school for marine science and technology at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, which is in New Bedford, the number one fishing port in the United States. Our school focuses on interdisciplinary applied marine science and the development of innovative technologies.

The ocean faces severe threats from climate change, ocean acidification, land-based runoff, pollution and poor management of resources. Alternative energy sources are key to addressing several of these threats. Wind farms and fisheries both harvest renewable, sustainable energy.

The enthusiastic development of offshore wind will occur primarily on continental shelves, and as such, the overlap between wind farms and fisheries is inevitable. The U.S. plans to increase its offshore wind production by 79% between 2020 and 2030, and bids for lease areas have been in the billions of dollars. In 2021, there were 33 companies or call areas on the continental shelf of the east coast.

Given the structural requirements of offshore wind coupled with the huge financial investments backed by government mandates to replace emissions with renewable energy, fishing industries will need to adapt. The ability of fisheries to harvest within or next to these wind farms depends on the types of fisheries, weather conditions, the spacing and design of the turbine array, turbine foundation structure and the degree to which the wind farm development influences the fish and invertebrate communities. The wind farm industry should recognize and minimize these effects.

The proposed wind farms along the Atlantic coast are huge. The sea floor in these areas is similar, and they support a marine ecosystem based mostly on mud, sand and some gravel. Developing the wind farms will add hard structure, thousands of small islands, throughout these areas, islands that pull energy out of the system. This will change the environment: the sea floor makeup, the current structure, the acoustics both during construction and operation, and the electromagnetic field. All these will impact the associated flora and fauna of the areas. This will happen on the scales of the individual turbine, which is centimetres to kilometres; the wind farm fields, from tens to hundreds of kilometres; and the entire eastern seaboard. It will affect the fisheries. Some will be able to harvest within the wind farms; some will not. All will have to navigate through or around them.

Right now, some wind farms are beginning to monitor the marine environment and the animals associated with them, but it is a disjointed effort. There is no overall framework to coordinate the different scientific research or push for broader ecosystem understanding.

I suggest that a framework that categorizes information about the ecology, economics and social and institutional effects of each of these two industries, with appropriate spatial and temporal scales, is key to reducing conflict and improving co-operation.

Everyone wants to develop sustainable energy, but you do not want to replace one form of sustainable energy harvest with another. Rather, you want to optimize both and reduce our dependency on non-renewable resources. These are billion-dollar developments, the largest in the world, and there should be a similar effort towards understanding the effects, both positive and negative, on the ecosystem and on our coastal communities.

Thank you very much.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you for your opening statement.

We will now go to Alex Templeton, who is with by video conference, for five minutes.

[Alex Templeton, Chair, Econext]

Good afternoon, Mr. Chair and members of the committee.

As a quick introduction, my name is Alex Templeton. I'm from St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador.

Professionally, I'm a partner of the Atlantic Canadian law firm McInnes Cooper, where I maintain a litigation and regulatory practice. As a volunteer, I serve as chair of the board of directors of Econext, and it's in that capacity that I appear before you today.

Econext is a not-for-profit association of over 200 member businesses that are collectively focused on accelerating clean growth in Newfoundland and Labrador, which is to say environmentally sustainable economic development in our province. Our members include businesses that are engaged in the ocean economy, including the offshore oil industry, as well as businesses that are engaged in the emerging onshore wind and clean fuels industry and businesses that would surely engage in an offshore wind industry in our waters, should one develop.

As such, we've been following your committee's proceedings with keen interest. We attend today with the benefit of having seen much of the testimony you've heard so far. We thank you for the invitation to appear today as a witness.

Under Bill C-49, regulatory authority for offshore wind energy production in Newfoundland and Labrador would be granted to the C-NLOPB through an expansion of its mandate beyond offshore oil and gas projects.

Since the 1980s, the C-NLOPB has provided effective joint federal-provincial oversight of the offshore industry with a mandate that's focused on safety, environmental protection, resource management and industrial benefits.

The legislation that brought about its creation, the Canada—Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation Act, fundamentally altered the trajectory of Newfoundland and Labrador’s economy. The regulatory framework that was established enabled billions of dollars of investment activity into our province and Canada. However, the impact extended far beyond this. Investments made into the province helped to create and foster a world-class cluster of small to medium-sized businesses that have been developing state-of-the-art technologies and services that are world leading.

Econext members are active from one corner of the globe to the other, exporting their oceans-focused technologies. Research facilities at Memorial University and its marine institute—designed and financed in part to support the offshore industry—are among the best in the world, and innovators from all over travel long distances to access them.

The capabilities that Newfoundlanders and Labradorians have developed are now being deployed internationally in support of offshore wind projects. Companies like Kraken Robotics, Rutter Inc., C-CORE and many others, which came in to being in part because of the opportunities provided by the offshore oil industry, are now using that knowledge to support the global energy transition.

Newfoundland’s Port of Argentia is a good example. It's North America’s first monopile marshalling port, supporting major U.S. offshore wind projects.

While offshore wind is still relatively nascent in North America, the fact is that it's a mature industry internationally with a considerable market value, and it's high time we welcomed some of this investment to Canada. The potential for offshore wind development in Newfoundland and Labrador in support of global commitments to net zero by the year 2050 is also significant.

However, without the enabling legislation and regulation in place, none of this will come to pass. Investors need certainty. Developers need clear pathways they can rely on. Offshore wind projects take many years to advance from concept to operations, and decisions are being made today about how long-term energy needs are going to be developed.

A modernized Atlantic accord could do it again: It could repeat the economic prosperity the original Atlantic accord achieved over the past four decades.

Whatever one's stance on renewable or non-renewable energy, the fact of the matter is that the C-NLOPB has the experience, technical expertise and a regulatory track record that are well suited to the offshore renewable energy sector. It's only logical to avail of this advantage. This approach is consistent with that seen in many other countries.

Joint federal-provincial jurisdiction is complex. Building on a strong foundation that both levels are comfortable with just makes sense.

Therefore, Econext is supportive of Bill C-49. It urges this committee to advance it expeditiously to the next stage in the legislative process. Delaying its implementation will only create uncertainty for investors and threaten the emergence of an industry that has great potential to transform Atlantic Canada's economy and allow for it to make a great contribution to Canada at large.

I thank you again for the invitation. I look forward to your questions.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you for your opening statement.

We'll now go to Meghan Lapp from Seafreeze Shoreside. You have five minutes for your opening statement.

[Meghan Lapp, Fisheries Liaison, Seafreeze Shoreside]

Thank you, committee members, for the opportunity to speak today.

My name is Meghan Lapp, and I am the fisheries liaison for Seafreeze, a Rhode Island commercial fishing company. We own five federally permitted commercial fishing vessels and two shoreside facilities.

I'm here to warn Canada against making the same mistakes that the United States has made in expediting offshore wind development. In our country, the government process has ignored our concerns, and as a result we have been forced into litigation as our only recourse. That is what will happen in Canada if the Canadian government follows in the footsteps of its American counterpart.

The proponents of offshore wind will claim that urgent action is necessary at all costs to prevent climate change. However, even U.S. government documents conclude that the proposed wind projects would have no measurable influence on climate change, and that the construction of offshore wind facilities is not expected to impact climate change. Therefore, the purported benefits do not outweigh the negative impacts.

Offshore wind development is the single greatest threat to the continued existence of commercial fishing on the U.S. east coast. Even U.S. government documents state that some fisheries “may not be able to safely operate and harvest the resource” in the wind development areas, and that, “In this situation, a large portion of annual income for vessels may be inaccessible during operations”. The official record of decision approving one offshore wind farm acknowledged, “it is likely that the entire...area will be abandoned by commercial fisheries due to difficulties with navigation.”

Our vessels will not be able to safely operate in a wind farm. Trawl gear such as ours can snag on the underwater infrastructure of the turbines and cables, and in a worst-case scenario cause the vessel to capsize. In the words of wind developer DONG Energy, now Ørsted, and a U.K. fisheries information agency, “Loss of gear, fishing time and catch can result if a trawler snags a subsea structure and there is serious risk of loss of life.” An analysis prepared for the Dutch government depicts the consequences of fishing in an offshore wind farm with a trawl vessel snagging on a wind farm cable, in which the vessel ends up at the bottom of the ocean. All U.S. farms will become de facto exclusion areas for fishing vessels such as ours.

Deconfliction of leases and fishing grounds, with a priority on protecting commercial fishing grounds from any offshore wind development, is the only solution. Canada has the opportunity now to ensure the safety and protection of its fisheries.

Safe transit through wind farms will also be impossible for fishing vessels and other forms of marine vessel traffic. Offshore wind turbines interfere with all classes of marine radar on which our vessels rely, especially at night, in inclement weather and in the fog. In 2022, the National Academies of Sciences released a report entitled, “Wind Turbine Generator Impacts to Marine Vessel Radar”, confirming years of issues I have raised to BOEM—the U.S. federal agency in charge of offshore wind leasing—and the U.S. Coast Guard.

The National Academies actually quoted part of my U.S. Coast Guard comment submissions in the final report, as well as many, if not all, the studies I had previously submitted to the coast guard and BOEM—which they ignored in favour of offshore wind expansion. The study identified areas of potential future research, but no immediate solutions. Prior to even the 2022 report, the U.S. Coast Guard had admitted via correspondence that its own vessels would be impacted by offshore wind radar interference, yet the coast guard does not conduct an independent radar interference analysis, even on its own vessel capabilities, and instead leaves this to the developer.

More recently, the U.S. Air Force requested that Congress enact legislation to prevent construction of wind farms within two nautical miles of the nation's nuclear missile silos, specifically due to the need to fly helicopters in those areas. According to the Air Force, wind turbines create both physical obstacles and turbulence that make wind farms “really dangerous...to fly into” with a helicopter. The coast guard uses helicopters as a primary means of search and rescue. If the U.S. Air Force cannot fly helicopters in wind farms, neither can the coast guard.

An official U.S. Coast Guard transcript regarding a fishing vessel sinking off Rhode Island in 2019 states six times that one of the reasons for aborting the helicopter search for potential survivors, in addition to poor weather conditions, were hazards in the area, which were identified as the Block Island wind farm turbines. Two out of three men died that day. There are only five Block Island turbines, not the thousands planned coast-wide. Vessels don't sink in good weather. They sink in bad weather when visibility is poor, when vessel radar needs to work and helicopters need to fly low. The fact is that a major mission of the U.S. Coast Guard, that of search and rescue, will be compromised due to offshore wind interference with its own vessels' radar and helicopter operations, yet it has still not conducted any comprehensive assessment of the level of reduction in its own capabilities due to offshore wind, despite the fact that offshore wind construction is ongoing in U.S. waters.

I implore Canada: Do not do what we are doing. Commercial fisheries are a true renewable resource industry that should not be cast aside for a 30-year project. You can't eat electricity.

Thank you for the opportunity to testify.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you for your opening statement.

We will now proceed to our first round of questions.

We'll start with Mrs. Shannon Stubbs from the Conservative Party of Canada for six minutes.

Mrs. Stubbs, the floor is yours.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair. I appreciate that.

Thank you to all of our witnesses here today to discuss, with committee members, Bill C-49.

Since we do have extended hours today, and everybody is here, with many here virtually, I would like to move the motion that I submitted and gave notice of on Friday, February 9.

I move:

That the Standing Committee on Natural Resources report to the House that it:

(a) recognizes that for hundreds of years, First Nations have suffered under a broken colonial system that takes power away from their communities and places it in the hands of politicians in Ottawa;

(b) recognizes the importance of enabling First Nations to take back control of their resource revenues from the federal government through a First Nations Resource Charge;

(c) recognizes that the Indian Act hands over all reserve land and money to the federal government and that this outdated system puts power in the hands of bureaucrats, politicians, and lobbyists—not First Nations;

(d) agrees with the First Nations Tax Commission and First Nations Chiefs from across the country that a First Nation Reserve Charge would result in economic reconciliation allowing indigenous communities to take back control of their lives.

For the information of all committee members, as I ask for your support for this motion, and for all Canadians, you might know that in Vancouver on February 8, the Honourable Pierre Poilievre, leader of Canada's common-sense Conservatives, committed to enable first nations to take back—

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

I have a point of order.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

—control of the resource revenues from big government gatekeepers in Ottawa.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Mrs. Stubbs, I'll ask you to hold for one second.

We have a point of order from Mr. Angus.

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

My concern is that my Conservative colleagues said they wanted witnesses on this very important legislation. We have witnesses, but they are no longer able to speak. They came and gave us their time. This is important legislation, and we've heard very provocative testimony. I'm asking the Conservatives to park their motion, so that we show respect to the witnesses who've come and show respect for the people of Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia. We're expecting this to do work on their behalf today.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you, Mr. Angus, for your point of order.

I acknowledge your concern, but the member is able to move a motion with her time. I'll allow the member to continue.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I certainly did express my personal concern and, on behalf of Conservatives, respect for the witnesses who are here today. Because of our extended hours, I'm grateful for their accommodation too, because, of course, this initiative is important to every single Canadian in every community right across Canada.

It would allow the discussion to proceed more efficiently with fewer of those interruptions. I will go back to briefing committee members and all Canadians about what happened on February 8, and why the Honourable Pierre Poilievre, leader of Canada's common-sense Conservatives, took this initiative to enable first nations to take back control of their resource revenues from big government gatekeepers—

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

I have a point of order.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

—in Ottawa after announcing those indigenous-led consultations—I'll just finish my sentence—along with the First Nations Tax Commission—

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Mrs. Stubbs, I'll ask you to hold, please. We do have a point of order—

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

—and first nations communities across Canada last year on January 23, 2023.

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Could I ask you to hold your thought, and then you can continue?

You have my apologies.

We have Mr. Sorbara on a point of order.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you, Chair.

I would like to get clarification from my colleagues on the opposite side.

We know that both the Province of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Province of Nova Scotia, and both premiers from opposite parties, and many stakeholders, wish to see this move forward. Will we be able to undertake questioning of the witnesses, who have taken time out of their days and their schedules, to talk about Bill C-49, or are we going to have the member opposite continue on this tangent for the foreseeable future?

[The Chair, Liberal, George Chahal]

Thank you, Mr. Sorbara, on your point of order.

Once again, as stated earlier, the member has the floor and does have the ability to move a motion with her time, as that's what has been done. If a member wants to address that with a statement they can, but procedurally they're allowed to move the motion.

Thank you.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

I have a point of order, Mr. Chair.

[Shannon Stubbs, Conservative, Lakeland, AB]

Thank you, Chair.

I hate to point out that this is just like—