Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you to the members. It's the first time I'm visiting this committee.
I just came from the environment committee, where I had the pleasure—this is not the right word—of hearing responses from Minister Guilbeault. It was the first time I have had the chance to speak with the minister at the environment committee. It was the first time in 262 days that the minister had appeared.
The Alberta Energy Regulator has appeared twice at the environment committee during that same time. By my estimation, the federal environment committee should have appearances by the environment minister of this federal government more frequently than by a provincial regulatory body.
To have them thrown under the bus for political reasons as we are heading into the Christmas season, I think, is something that we should not really be focusing a lot of time on, given the frustrations that provinces have with this government and have rightfully already aired publicly. Most recently the premier of the Northwest Territories spoke out against the cost of the carbon tax for his constituents. We have had, obviously, headaches within the prairie provinces over natural resource regulations, particularly in the aftermath of Bill C-69, the “no more pipelines” legislation, being slapped down by the Supreme Court for its unconstitutionality. Then the federal Liberal government just decided to go further. They decided to impose the “Ottawa knows best” approach on provinces once again with new methane emissions being proposed and with the clean electricity regulations that most definitely are going to be ruled unconstitutional, particularly given the reference case of the Impact Assessment Agency and Bill C-69.
All of that said, I think it's frustrating that provinces are having to deal with what seems like a concerted effort by the federal government from Ottawa attacking them.
The reason I came and joined this committee was to look at the same motion that we saw at the environment committee, where the Liberals tabled it because they wanted to use it to distract. They want to divide and to distract provinces and Canadians, and it is so very frustrating. I think for the good of our federation, it's just time to stop.
If you actually want to work with provinces on issues like tailings pond seepage or regulations, you need to be an active partner in working with provincial governments and not just say you're going to work with them and then impose your measures from Ottawa.
Mr. Chair, in relation to the specific amendment to this motion, I agree that it is decent. I would propose an additional amendment that would remove the unnecessary third paragraph that states its disappointment, because I don't think it's the role of the federal government through the public accounts committee to relay disappointment to a provincial regulatory body.
I would move a subamendment to the amendment that we remove paragraph three.