Mr. Speaker, like the previous member, I am very pleased to rise in the House to speak to Bill C-15, the Donkin coal block development opportunity act.
This basically involves a jurisdictional issue involving a provincial mine. It is good legislation. I certainly will be supporting it when it comes to a vote.
I would classify the mine as a provincial mine. It is a mine that is not being developed fresh. A lot of the infrastructure is there, although when the infrastructure was established, it was determined at the time that it was too expensive to take the coal out of the mine, the coal which is a proven resource.
The mine is located six or seven miles subsea. As such, it would be under the jurisdiction of the Government of Canada. However, the entry to the mine and all other aspects of the mine would be provincial issues. We can see the chaos and confusion that would result, because at certain points in time workers would be doing activities in certain locations that would be under the jurisdiction of the Province of Nova Scotia and then if they moved on into the mine pit, they would be under the jurisdiction of the Government of Canada. There would be uncertainty, confusion and chaos. It is incumbent upon the Government of Canada and the Government of Nova Scotia to clarify that so that the private sector developer, along with the Government of Nova Scotia and the people who live in Cape Breton, can move forward on this particular development.
I am pleased with the legislation. I am pleased with the level of cooperation that exists between the Government of Nova Scotia and the Government of Canada on this particular issue. I am not going to get into the other issue that was discussed in the last 15 minutes.
The legislation transfers most of the jurisdictional aspects in connection with the operation of the mine to the Government of Nova Scotia. For example, occupational safety, workers compensation, labour, prosecution of offences, et cetera, will be under the ambit and at the expense of the Government of Nova Scotia. There is a detailed platform for dealing with all jurisdictional issues that has been agreed to by the Government of Canada and the Government of Nova Scotia. Basically, it is a delegation of responsibilities.
Like other speakers in this House, I want to congratulate the member for Cape Breton—Canso and the member for Sydney—Victoria for their hard work, their dedication and their perseverance in bringing this matter forward. They are to be congratulated. Certainly the people in Cape Breton can go to bed tonight knowing full well that they are well served in this institution.
I come from the province of Prince Edward Island. We have actually had a similar experience there which worked well. That was when the fixed link was constructed, the bridge that connects the province of New Brunswick with the province of Prince Edward Island.
Again, that involved legislation and an agreement. In that case, as members can see, a lot of the site works were done either in the province of New Brunswick or in the province of Prince Edward Island and so there were jurisdictional issues involving the Government of Canada. All parties came together in a cooperative agreement and it really did not result in any issues.
Of course sales tax is one of the other issues that has to be worked out in these agreements.
As I alluded to briefly in my opening comments, this is not a new mine. It has been around for quite some time. A lot of the exploratory work has been done. The tunnels actually were done quite some years ago. After the analysis and a lot of the work was done, it was determined at that point in time that it was not economically feasible to mine the coal that was there. It was just too far out.
Again, things have changed over the last number of years. As everyone is aware, the price of coal and energy in all its elements has increased dramatically. Technology has improved substantially, not only technology involving the clean coal issues but also the extraction of the coal. Those issues have all combined together to make this particular initiative now economically feasible, as I understand, and I hope it will be moving ahead. This will be an excellent development for the island of Cape Breton.
We are dealing with legislation that deals with a particular mine. I know the mine is important for the Island of Cape Breton and for the province of Nova Scotia but I suspect that this situation will be repeated over and over.
Many activities are occurring in the Arctic. There are other issues. It is my recommendation that the government ought to consider some type of overarching legislation that would deal with incidents such as this where we deal with a mine or a bridge or some other installation that would have cross-jurisdictional issues involved so that the overarching framework can be dealt with through agreement.
The agreement would need to come to Parliament and a parliamentary committee but I am not sure we would need to deal with it through legislation in each and every instance. We might be dealing with a mine or a project that is not as big as the Donkin coal mine and it would be a shame if the expense and the delay would have to be involved in getting legislation through both the provincial legislature, the Parliament of Canada and, of course, the Senate of Canada. That is just a suggestion I would make as we go forward.
In researching this particular issue, it is clear to me that the major stakeholders on this particular project are very much behind this legislation and this initiative. The Province of Nova Scotia and the people who live in Cape Breton, the municipality of Cape Breton, the trade unions, including the Nova Scotia Federation of Labour, all seem to be very supportive of this particular legislation. That is one of the reasons why I support the legislation 100%.
There has been some discussion about environmental concerns and that needs to be dealt with. I hope and I believe it will be dealt with by the Province of Nova Scotia and that all the legislation that it has on its books will be vigorously enforced as this project goes forward.
Another issue that has been raised in the debate is that this is a wedge issue between different provinces and different regions of the country. I do not see it that way at all. I see it as a positive development where one province or one jurisdiction has made an agreement with another jurisdiction and, in each case, it required legislation. This is the legislation that has to deal with the Government of Canada. I do not see it, in any way at all, as different jurisdictions. It is a cooperative initiative.
I consider this legislation to be positive. I congratulate the people who were involved in bringing it forward to the House. I want to tell the House that I will be supporting the bill when it comes to a vote.