Mr. Speaker, I rise today to pursue a question that was first put on June 1 to the hon. parliamentary secretary for fisheries and oceans.
I am very glad that we have this procedure of adjournment proceedings, because, as we all know, it is very difficult in the very short time available in question period to put a question together to fully explain the context, so I am going to return to my question, explain it more fully and put it again to the parliamentary secretary.
I started my question by quoting a quite extraordinary letter written by four former ministers of fisheries and oceans: the Honourable Tom Siddon, the Honourable John Fraser, the Honourable Herb Dhaliwal and the Honourable David Anderson. They all happen to be from British Columbia, but they do not happen to be in the same party. There are two Liberals and two Progressive Conservatives.
These four gentlemen are calling on the government to withdraw from the omnibus budget bill those sections that have no place being there, the sections destroying the Fisheries Act.
What they said at one point in the letter was:
With respect to process, we find it troubling that the government is proposing to amend the Fisheries Act via omnibus budget legislation in a manner that we believe will inevitably reduce and weaken the habitat-protection provisions. Regrettably, despite the significance of the legislation, to date the responsible ministers have provided no plausible, let alone convincing, rationale for proceeding with the unusual process that has been adopted.
This is the section that I quoted in my question to the hon. member:
Quite frankly, Canadians are entitled to know whether these changes were written, or insisted upon, by the Minister of Fisheries or by interest groups outside the government. If the latter is true, who are they?
In putting this question forward on June 1, I added, “Where are they, in Canada or in Beijing?”
I know my hon. friend found that, in his words, a strange question, so let me elaborate on why I think that is the question.
We are looking at a lot of changes in Canadian environmental assessment law, changes that would make cabinet superior to the National Energy Board for decision-making purposes. We are looking at changes to the Navigable Waters Protection Act, the Fisheries Act and the Species at Risk Act, and they are in aid of what is described as a great urgency to approve projects.
I have had some experience with projects of the Government of Canada. The case I will relate involved the previous government of the Right Honourable Jean Chrétien. In a feverish attempt to sell nuclear reactors to China, the government actually loaned China the money to buy our reactors and wanted to evade environmental review. At the time I was with the Sierra Club of Canada, and I actually took them to court. Unfortunately, due to a number of procedural delays imposed on us by Atomic Energy of Canada Limited, the matter never got litigated. However, the crux of it is this: when Canada deals with China, in my experience, Canada reduces its environmental reviews.
In this instance we have a tremendous number of changes that make no sense to Canadians. They make no sense to people who have worked in Fisheries and Oceans. They particularly make no sense to these four former fisheries ministers, nor to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, which voted in an emergency resolution this week to seek to withdraw those changes.
What is driving it? It seems to me that the Prime Minister gave us a sense of that with two statements. One was on May 10 in the House in response to the hon. leader of the Liberal Party. On reducing environmental assessments, the Prime Minister said, “It is vital to the certainty of our investors”. At the same time, we know that the Prime Minister already promised the leadership in Beijing when he was visiting China that the Enbridge supertanker project would proceed.
Therefore, it seems to me that it is a very relevant question. Who is driving these changes, Canadians or investors in the Communist Party of China?