Madam Speaker, I will be the only speaker for the Reform Party on this matter and I shall be brief.
Bill C-6 is mostly housekeeping. As we stated earlier in the House, we will endorse its basic thrust which is to transfer regulatory authority over frontier oil and gas development from the political arena to an independent body, the National Energy Board. We believe that this action is also endorsed by most of the industry stakeholders.
This bill does have one glaring weakness which we were unable to remedy in committee. It gives the National Energy Board unlimited power to determine what is or is not a significant discovery or a commercial discovery and to make unilateral decisions affecting certain technical operations.
Aggrieved parties will be able to appeal a board decision only to the board itself so that a single quasi-judicial body becomes in effect judge, jury and executioner. Questions of law of course could be further appealed to the courts by any party willing to accept the cost and long delay of such actions. But questions of fact, technical decisions, could not be challenged.
Industry representatives have indicated to us that the National Energy Board as presently constituted functions well, has knowledgeable personnel and has a good track record.
Our concern is that we are looking at the board in a snapshot in time. We do not know what it will be like 10 or 15 years from now. Bill C-6 nevertheless gives it an extraordinary amount of power with no checks or balances.
Laws are like contracts. They should be written to deal with worst case scenarios, not under the assumption that all concerned parties will be forever noble, rational and fair.
In committee we attempted to rectify this problem with amendments to allow final appeals of board decisions to a second independent body, the oil and gas committee as defined in the Canada Oil and Gas Operations Act. Having failed to win this safeguard in committee, the Reform Party will not vexatiously continue to pursue a cause which is already lost.
Most of the bill and its intent are acceptable to us. We therefore support it, albeit somewhat grudgingly.