Mr. Speaker, resuming more or less where I left off, I am speaking to Bill C-15 at report stage.
I had earlier canvassed a couple of key points. One is that this is not an improper use of an omnibus bill, but it certainly is an omnibus bill. It does stay and pertain to one central theme, which is implementing budget 2016. I do remain concerned, however, that we should have spent more time on it.
I mentioned one item in particular where I think the current Liberal government may be flirting with the accusation of it being improper. We did spend some time on this one item in finance committee, but not enough, and that is clause 38, which adds section 135.2 in relation to tax-deferred treatment for transactions under the continuation of the Canadian Wheat Board.
It would have been good to have had this in a separate piece of legislation. The chair of our finance committee pursued the matter of what happened to the assets of the Canadian Wheat Board with some departmental officials. There were billions of dollars there. Where did that money go? How do we find out where it it went?
We know that, in respect of the tax consequences of the trust created in connection with the continuation of the Canadian Wheat Board, the debt of the Wheat Board acquired by the trust is not included in the trust income, but we do not know what happened to the assets of the Canadian Wheat Board, which is a rather substantial question, and whether they were transferred to prairie farmers, as was expected. It appears that they were not.
That is an item that would have been better handled had this part of the budget bill been separated out so it could be properly studied.
There are other aspects that I did not have enough time to address before we stopped for members' statements and question period. I want to revisit one of them in particular that I described as egregious moments ago. Let me explain why.
That is found in the budget, and also, of course, the funds are provided in Bill C-15. On the face of it, if we did not know this issue well, we would think that it was great that the government is providing funding for the improved process under the National Energy Board for looking at environmental assessments.
I found it egregious, and I will read from the budget, at page 166. It says:
Budget 2016 proposes to provide $14.2 million over four years...to the Canadian Environmental Assessment Agency to support the Agency in fulfilling its responsibilities under the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, 2012.
Further up on the same page, there is a similar suggestion that money will be provided:
...$16.5 million over three years...to [support] the National Energy Board...to implement the interim approach.
That was announced earlier this year by the Minister of Environment and Climate Change and the Minister of Natural Resources.
What must not be lost in this discussion of environmental assessment is that the current state of Canadian environmental assessment law is unacceptable, full stop. It is a failure. It is a process that does not work. It does not examine all parts of the environment, nor does it allow the right agency to do the reviews.
Having the National Energy Board do environmental assessments at all is a departure from Canadian environmental law, it is a departure from the National Energy Board's area of expertise, and it is completely unworkable.
We need to go back and revisit the changes that were made in Bill C-38 and repair the Environmental Assessment Act for good, not based on interim measures being spread out for a further three to four years with funding to operate under interim measures to fix a broken process.
It would be far better for all concerned, including industry stakeholders. I was speaking the other day with the Mining Association of Canada leadership. They said they had never wanted the changes that happened in Bill C-38. They do not find the process better.
We need to fix the process, not fund a kind of Rube Goldberg device to try to make something unfixable slightly better.
Those are main concerns with the budget. I find that, although I like this budget a lot more than anything I have read in the last 10 years, I cannot vote for it, because of the continuation of fossil fuel subsidies and the continuation of funding a broken EA process.