Madam Speaker, today I have the honour of speaking to our fellow citizens about Bill C-9, and also about the process that brought this omnibus bill, with its range of issues that have absolutely nothing to do with the budget, before the House.
As Montesquieu so aptly put it, the public nature of our laws helps to guarantee our freedoms. But the title of this bill tells people nothing about what it contains. The Conservatives included a series of measures in Bill C-9 because they know perfectly well that the Liberals are now so weak with their current leader that they do not even dare stand up to vote against this bill even though it contains measures that will cripple the environmental assessment process in this country and allow the sale of Atomic Energy of Canada Limited to foreign interests. Measures in this bill will overturn court rulings, such as the one concerning Canada Post.
The title of a bill is part of that bill, and the courts have always said that the people have the right to know what we are doing. Saying that this is a budget bill that deals only with public finances is nothing but a lie. It is a lie to the House and to the people. The government does not have the right to introduce a so-called budget bill that includes all of these other measures, but that is exactly what the Conservatives are doing. The fact that they are a minority government is unusual in our society. This is the third minority government in a row. They are learning how to deal with a situation in which they always need a dance partner.
I want to focus on one aspect of Bill C-9 that is particularly important to me and that really worries me: the environment. I was Quebec's environment minister for several years, and during that time, I realized that one of Canada's biggest problems is its failure to strictly enforce environmental laws.
A team led by David Boyd at the University of Victoria in British Columbia published an excellent book in 2002 or 2003 called Unnatural Law. This book clearly demonstrates that what Canada needs is not necessarily new laws or regulations, but the political will to enforce them.
I sometimes surprise environmentalists when I say, based on my experience as environment minister, that the vast majority of businesses obey environmental laws. That is a fact. First, the vast majority of businesses obey the law. Second, the vast majority of businesses care about their image, and the environment is part of that. Third, breaking the law, any law, is very bad for a business's balance sheet, and therefore the shareholders' equity.
So, the trick is not to find lawyers who can get around the law. The trick these days, and we have seen this with BP in the Gulf of Mexico, is to try to change the legislation. How did BP's oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico become the worst disaster of all time? Why were there no safety mechanisms in place, even though they are well known and installing them is relatively simple, albeit costly for the business?
British Petroleum managed to convince the environmental and energy regulators in the U.S. to remove the obligation to drill a lateral relief well that would be relieve the main well in the event of an accident. That is the trick for big corporations.
Thus, they stop at nothing to have legislation changed here in Canada. They are going to find it too expensive to drill in the Arctic, the next frontier they have their eyes on. They say it would have cost them too much to drill relief wells off Newfoundland and Labrador, where Chevron is drilling even deeper.
They are making a major gain with Bill C-9, because the bill will give responsibility for environmental assessments to the National Energy Board, which has no experience or expertise in this area. The board of directors of the Calgary-based NEB is made up mainly of people from the oil industry, as we can discover on its website.
In regulation theory, there is an expression used to describe this situation. It is regulatory capture. In other words, the regulatory authority, whose role is ordinarily to enforce strict standards and protect the public and the environment, is part of the sector it is charged with regulating and therefore tends to look at problems in the same way as the companies it is called on to regulate. This is an absolutely classic situation, and it is one of the two major problems in regulation and legislation.
The other problem is regulatory lag, which means that there is always a time lag in regulation. By the time the Goldman Sachs of the world come up with a new financial product and the government figures it out and tries to regulate it, it is too late. The companies are busy coming up with the next product, so that there is always a time lag.
But regulatory capture—being locked into seeing things in a certain way because of the sector one is in—is the mistake the government is making with Bill C-9. It is giving the National Energy Board responsibility for environmental assessment, which is a very important step. This means that from now on, there will be no real environmental assessment per se in Canada. The industry and its cronies at the National Energy Board will be calling the shots. Not only is this a tragedy like the one that is unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico, but it is a tragedy for future generations.
The government stood up with us this week to vote for a motion made by my colleague from Alberta—a very experienced environmental lawyer—calling on the government to ensure that Canada has the strongest rules in the world.
Yesterday, I was very concerned to hear the Minister of Natural Resources say that the work was already being done by the National Energy Board.
That is the situation in Canada. Since the Conservatives came to power, they have scooped $57 billion from the employment insurance fund to create enough room to give tax cuts to the wealthiest corporations. If a company did not make a profit, it did not pay taxes and therefore a tax cut was of no benefit. Who got the most money? More than $1 billion went to the banks and several billion dollars went to the oil industry.
A company like EnCana got almost $1 billion in tax cuts because the Conservatives would rather tax ordinary citizens than ask corporations to pay their fair share. The oil companies and the Conservatives are kindred spirits. It is not pre-Keynesian economics, it is Precambrian economics. The government is even going so far as to say that companies should no longer be taxed at all. Why make companies pay their fair share?
In the meantime, these same companies are on the move. British Petroleum, which has been making headlines lately, has operations in 130 different countries and has more than 3,500 subsidiaries. It does not pay taxes because, like all major corporations, it moves its money around very quickly from one place to another and takes advantage of the different tax rules in each place. In developing countries where BP has operations—and developed ones as well—are losing revenue that could help their development.
Accounting tricks and today's rapidly fluctuating markets around the world make it possible for these companies to avoid paying their taxes.
In environmental, social and economic terms, we are in crisis and that is why this omnibus bill is an abomination. We are going to stand up and vote against it.