Madam Speaker, I welcome this opportunity to speak to the motion standing in the name of the hon. member for Swift Current-Maple Creek-Assiniboia: "That, in the opinion of this House, the government should move to streamline administrative and regulatory processes in the energy sector with the objective to minimize unnecessary regulatory burden".
I think the hon. member's motion is particularly relevant at a time when one of the items on the government's parliamentary agenda is Bill C-62, the Regulatory Efficiency Act, and in fact I hope members of all parties will work together to find an effective way to make regulations flexible and refrain from policies that are counterproductive.
The motion of the hon. member for Swift Current-Maple Creek-Assiniboia deals indirectly with a set of regulations that are so rigid they often cause more harm than otherwise in the energy sector. The hon. member's motion could also apply to other areas as well and in fact to practically any area of human activity, since almost everything we do is regulated.
This motion also leads us to question the advisability of having so many levels of government, each with their own regulations, federal, provincial and even municipal. All these levels of government have their various departments, each with the authority to veto the other's initiatives, which means that obtaining a single permit may be a very lengthy process. In this respect, the director of a new mining development, the Troilus project north of Chibougamau in Quebec, pointed out in an interview with Radio-Canada that he needed no less than 37 certified permits before he could start his project.
On the basis of his own experience with the Troilus project, he also said in the interview that he realized why Canada now ranked only fifth in the world as a country that was attractive for mining exploration. It was mainly because of its undue regulatory burden. Although he made it clear that he was not in favour of more flexible environmental regulations, he did point out that competition between various levels of government and various departments made the work of developers unnecessarily complex and was not conducive to economic development.
At the federal level, the number of regulations is impressive. It is enough just to flip through the 14,420 pages of the Consolidated Regulations of Canada of 1978 and the 4,277 pages of the Canada Gazette , part II, for 1994 alone.
The regulatory process, which is intended among other things to lighten the legislative process of which it is a part, has had the opposite effect over the years, adding to the number of standards without necessarily improving quality.
There are therefore a growing number of increasingly complex and technical regulations, and this has resulted in a considerably more complicated administrative burden for Canadian taxpayers. It would be appropriate to assess the impact of this situation upon the
competitiveness of Canadian businesses and even upon the Canadian economy as a whole.
I would like to cite one example of a situation in which two legitimate objectives are at cross-purposes in responding to two different safety requirements, the example of an infant crib with a drop side to make it easier for disabled parents to use. Such a crib cannot meet crib safety standards, which require the sides to be fixed, when the side needs to be lowered to ensure safe access for disabled parents. This regulation runs counter to the needs of disabled parents and presents an enormous obstacle for them.
One could readily imagine some mechanism to reconcile these two objectives, if a worthwhile instrument for doing so were created, instead of stupidly allowing the regulations to control the situation.
As the member for the Abitibi region I have often had to intervene in order to help speed up the administrative process for projects held up by the application of outmoded regulations. For example, the Grevet mining project near Quévillon in the Abitibi region had to wait 15 months to obtain environmental approval.
In order to get these approvals, authorizations from the Departments of Environment and Indian Affairs, among others, also had to be obtained, because the area is close to the James Bay reserve and the Cree territory. Here again, we can see that the federal government, by interfering in provincial jurisdictions, is creating overlap that only makes regulations more cumbersome, so that processes needed to administer them are more complex and more confusing.
This is not new, at least for the official opposition, that has spent a lot of its energy trying to make the federal government understand that its policy of centralizing everything too often causes more harm than good.
The oft-requested creation of a single window for permits or any other activity requiring the cooperation of several governments or departments has become more than essential and our economy's viability depends on it.
In the energy sector, the situation is no different. At the national level, a number of major players are involved in the regulatory process and somehow competing with each other. The federal government, through the National Energy Board or Natural Resources Canada, also adopts regulations, thus adding to the competition between federal and provincial environmental agencies.
This undue regulatory burden has a disastrous impact on the energy sector. My colleague from the Reform Party who showed an interest in the vitality of Canada's energy sector and the well-being of his fellow citizens is seeking with his motion to express his concern that regulations are strangling industry and, in turn, all Canadians.
As I too am concerned about the mining industry, I can say that the decline of investments in mining exploration clearly illustrates the disastrous effects of a double, and even triple layer of administration, because the excessive number of regulations is only one of the important factors in the decline of mining investments.
The mining industry is linked to the energy sector because it accounts for close to 13 per cent of the total energy demand of industry in Canada and Quebec, and it is suffering needlessly as a result of this situation. Why does the federal government let this situation, that impacts so negatively on our economy, go on?
Any businessman will tell you that a bad organization makes you lose time and, as you know, time is money, which means that in the end it could have dire consequences for the company. We are not talking about a small business here, but about an industry that accounts for 7 per cent of Canada's and Quebec's GDP or $45 billion each year.
This is far from the single window concept which I talked about earlier and which would allow for the simplification of the administrative process. We know of projects that were approved by the provincial government but rejected by the federal government. Conflicts arise because each level considers itself to be the only one that has the power to regulate.
To conclude on this motion, I would say that we obviously have to rationalize without delay the administrative process and its regulations in the energy sector. Too many agencies, companies and individuals are paying the price of this duplication and these useless conflicts.
The federal government should, in the interest of everyone, simplify its regulations, leave to each level of government its own regulation-making, even if it has to resort to single windows to deliver permits when an act applies to a provincial area of responsibility.
It is a good thing that the rest of Canada has begun to talk about rationalizing the role of each government. In Quebec, we have been asking for that for a long time.