Debates of April 30th, 2018

Oil Tanker Moratorium Act

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Minister of Transport]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member where he did his research. I have personally met with the Lax Kw' alaams many times. Incidentally, the hereditary chiefs of the Lax Kw' alaams do not agree with the Lax Kw' alaams Chief John Helin. I also met with the Metlakatla, the Nisga'a, the Haida, the Haisla, with the Heiltsuk, and with Eagle Spirit. Where does the member do his research when he says no one was consulted?

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, on March 22, 2018, the Lax Kw' alaams asked for an injunction against this legislation because they do not agree with the government. At Grassy Point, they have a deep water port. It is a safe area for a marine port, and the government has unilaterally chosen to shut it down. It does not make any sense. Why are the Liberals doing a one-size-fits-all solution that harms the Lax Kw' alaams first nation? They can talk about consulting all these other first nations, but frankly if they are not giving an exception or supporting the Lax Kw' alaams, then they have failed to do their duty.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member talked about investments and the uncertainty here in Canada. John Ivison wrote a great article this morning on the front page of the National Post. He talked about the “slow bleeding” of corporate Canada that is about to be under way, and the fact that as investments are slowing, they are almost ready to fall off the cliff.

One of the comments he made was on the uncertainty, not just “over NAFTA, [but] minimum wage hikes, high electricity prices, jurisdictional wrangling over pipelines and carbon taxes, the imposition of new environmental regulations” and why they have a precedent. The government is more interested in taxing than generating wealth.

The government talks about how all these things are doing, yet we see investments starting to dry up. The member alluded to this in his comments, and I would hope he would comment further about how this is undermining not just the oil and gas sector, but other sectors in this industry.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, the numbers do not lie, and we have lost $80 billion in investment over the last two years alone. Maybe we do not see the impact today, but these are the investments that will grow our economy tomorrow by providing the jobs and wages for tomorrow. The government can talk about how great the economic numbers are, but it is living off economic numbers from investment when the Conservatives were in government. We are going to be living in a future that has less investment because of the actions of the government.

[Gord Johns, NDP, Courtenay—Alberni, BC]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague talked a lot about responsible economic development and he spoke about oil. When I think about oil and the oil sector, I look to Norway, which has $1 trillion in its prosperity fund. In fact, it is earning about $50 billion a year on interest alone, whereas Alberta has $11 billion put away.

I would like to hear the member speak about how this happened. How did Canada get left with $11 billion in its prosperity fund and Norway has $1 trillion, which is earning $50 billion a year in interest? It is investing in countries like Guyana, on a low-carbon strategy, doing good work around the world, and making investments necessary to tackle climate change, focused on transition where it is investing in renewable energy.

I would like the member to speak about the pathway forward and how we can be more responsible like our Norwegian friends.

[Dane Lloyd, Conservative, Sturgeon River—Parkland, AB]

Mr. Speaker, one thing people fail to mention when they talk about the example of Norway is, yes, it may have this large sovereign wealth fund, but it also has hundreds of billions of dollars in debt.

As Albertans, we made a very conscious choice that we wanted to eliminate our debt as a province. Sadly, under the current NDP government in Alberta, we are going right back down that debt hole again. I must say I am very proud of the Alberta Investment Management Corporation and our heritage fund. It is doing an excellent job of investing the wealth of Alberta, which is providing excellent returns. I want to see a future Conservative government, under Jason Kenney, continue with that great action and grow that fund even further.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise in the House to talk about this bill.

I sat on the transport committee while this bill made its way through committee. I know this has been labelled by many as hypocrisy, but the number one thing I want to talk about today is consultation. It is interesting that it was brought up by the last speaker from Edmonton and the minister mentioned it as well.

The minister made a key point that I think will be proven wrong in a court of law. He mentioned it at committee as well. I asked him about the duty to consult. He responded to that question with a long list. He will remember full well the list he provided me. However, when he asked his question just now, he said that he had a meeting or that he met.

That is not consultation. I asked people whom he had on his list when they appeared before committee if they had met with the minister. They said, “Yes, we did.” I asked if they called that consultation. Whether they approved of the ban or opposed the ban, they all snickered because they all know it was not consultation. In fact, a number of the people who were there also said, and members can check the record because it is all recorded, that when they sat down with the minister, they told him that it was not to be considered consultation, that it was just a meeting.

The question constitutional experts, and I am not one, will ask is, “Do you need to consult to impose legislation?” Well, we might find out.

The flip side of this is, let us say another government gets in in another period of time and wants to do away with Bill C-48 and eliminate the tanker ban. Will it need to consult? We may find out the answer to that question as well.

The key point is, and I think we will see this in the court case that is being brought forward, whether the federal government has the right to impede on resource development on lands where it is clearly stated in their nationhood? Will the government have the ability to eliminate any possibility for them to develop resources, to transport resources across the area? Will it be able to tell them whether or not they will be able to develop a deepwater port along the coastline of their land?

I think most constitutional experts would say that as long as it passed all the regulatory requirements of an environmental assessment, etc., they probably should be able to. We will see.

I just wanted to make that point, that from the very beginning of when the minister appeared just down the hallway here on Bill C-48, I asked him the question, and all the way through the process of the bill going through committee, I asked the question. Each and every time, people felt they were not consulted. They had a meeting, but true consultation is not a meeting. We will see on that one. It will be an interesting court case.

I will also mention that there were a few comments that really raised my eyebrows on the reconciliation and rehabilitation between first nations members and government. Again, this is on the record. One of the main objectives of the government was to improve relations with first nations, and they made the comment, “We don't need a trust fund prime minister telling us what to do.” They also looked at this bill as “further colonialism.” We are talking 2017-18. These are their words. These are not my words. These are the words of first nations members.

Eagle Spirit Energy took five years to work on a project where members of first nations could come together to develop resources from Alberta to the coast of B.C. and to do a project. One of their comments, which I also thought was great, was that they were not looking for a handout, that they were looking for a hand up to further the economic ability and the economic development within their own communities to give their people, their children, and their grandchildren an opportunity to have a better life.

These are regular Canadians who just want a chance to develop resources in a safe manner and transport resources in a safe manner. They love their country, they love their environment, and they would not do anything if they ever thought it would have a negative impact on them.

I know hypocrisy has been mentioned before, and probably every speech has mentioned it in one form or another. We are banning tanker traffic in this area, yet we are not banning it in an area south of this area. We are not banning it in an area on the east coast. We are not banning it in an area along the St. Lawrence. It is just one specific area. Oil will be coming in from different countries that certainly have less stringent environmental regulations on the development of resources than we do. This has even been written about by former Liberal members of Parliament as well.

To show members the kind of crisis we are at and the situation we are in, instead of creating a pipeline to transport oil to a port and transporting it from that port on a safe vessel to a market and actually getting a fair price for it, we are now forcing companies like CN Rail and other technology companies to use this product called CanaPux. They are actually adding polymer plastic to oil so they can ship it by rail through the two CN rail lines on the northern coast. They ship these CanaPux on vessels that would normally handle coal. This is what we have been forced to do. Diesel locomotives are travelling thousands of kilometres of rail line up and down interesting terrain just to ship it along the way. As a guy from Ontario, I sometimes question what we are doing in this country.

Another thing I thought troublesome, and I think the minister and department officials would agree, is the schedule. Using the CanaPux example, I asked government officials if CanaPux would be put on the schedule. Well, nobody has an answer, and I am not sure anybody will have an answer. Also, if we get on that schedule, how do we get off the schedule? There are no answers to that. Before any proposed legislation comes into force, I think that needs to be clearly defined and clearly set out. The industry has a right to know.

A constituent of mine mentioned that there is a consortium of clean tech people who have the technology and ability to clean up spills. They have been on a contract to provide cleanup services on the west coast. Their project or their submission to public works was flatly declined in favour of a solvent that was an American technology. I do not think we have anything against America, but when we have a Canadian technology that has been proven to be able to clean up oil spills—not dissolve oil, but actually clean up oil spills—then we have to question exactly what we are trying to accomplish here. I feel fairly safe about what technology can do to deal with vessels exporting oil products to this country, China, and parts in between, but what are we doing?

The final thing I will add is that yes, there is a ban on oil, but there is no ban on diesel fuel. Obviously I am not a scientist and I realize that the two have different properties, but there is no ban on diesel fuel. That is further to the hypocrisy point. I would say that if we had a diesel spill, it would cause a lot of damage to the environment, marine life, and marine plants, yet there is no mention of that in the bill. Each side is making is making their points, and the bill will get passed, but I would like to mention that there will obviously be court challenges and perhaps quite a bit of hypocrisy as well.

[Marc Garneau, Liberal, Minister of Transport]

Mr. Speaker, I have a few clarifications.

The CanaPux development is an interesting one. I have been on public record saying that we would look at it. It may be something that does not need to be put in the schedule. On the schedule itself, that is for dilbit and persistent oils. The member mentioned diesel. There are different kinds of diesel. Some are more persistent than others. I suggest the member do a little bit of research on that.

What I really want to ask the member about is the consultation process. He definitely had his views on whether we consulted. We consulted an enormous amount, not just me but my ministry as well. We consulted all sorts of different groups. However, I wonder if the member consulted any first nations who are in favour of the moratorium, because there are quite a few. I would like to know what kind of feedback he got from them.

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Mr. Speaker, in fact, the Haida Nation came to committee. I do not know if anybody who attended that meeting is in the House, but I asked the representatives and they said that they were not consulted either. That is on the record as well. It is from committee testimony from 2017. I did not say that. I just asked them if they felt they had been consulted, and they said no. Here is a nation that obviously supports the bill, but its members do not feel like they have been consulted.

In my area, Huron—Bruce, with Bruce Power, OPG, the Port of Goderich, and others, there is a lot of consultation taking place with members of first nations. The Saugeen First Nation would be a great example. One, two, or three meetings is not consultation. Until the entire community feels as though it has been properly informed, until the people know the science and know everything there is possibly to know about the project, up to and including the legal opinions they get from their own lawyers, truly only then is that what they would consider consultation. They could probably tell a lot better than I can, but a couple of meetings with some ministers in British Columbia is not consultation. If that is the Liberals' only consultation, they will find in the court of law that they will have their hats handed to them.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, what the Liberals fail to see is that there is a challenge, an undercurrent in this country where investment is starting to dry up because of decisions the government has made. The Liberals go around the world telling people to come and invest in Canada, and yet a number of investment dollars have left. Last summer, when the Liberals mused about making tax cuts, the Canadian Federation of Independent Business brought in stakeholders and talked about how a billion dollars had left the country, because capital can flee.

Given some of the challenges that have been going on with building pipelines, does the member believe that we are going to be in trouble in terms of being able to attract direct foreign investment as we move forward from this point on?

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Mr. Speaker, we are at a very significant period of time in Canada's history. Can we get big projects done? Do we have the will, not just from the business side but also from the environmental side, to lay out in clear terms what it takes to get a project done? The Liberals have taken that and destroyed all certainty. No one knows. There are projects that have been under environmental assessment for over a decade, very complicated and complex environmental assessment, and because of the changes the Liberals have made, it does not work. I know of a gold mine that was almost through the environmental assessment process, and then the Liberals changed the process and now it has to start over again. That is not good for business. It is a waste of time.

We are at an important point in this country's history. Do we have the intestinal fortitude to get these projects done, get people back to work, and continue to make this the greatest country in the world?

[Nathan Cullen, NDP, Skeena—Bulkley Valley, BC]

Mr. Speaker, as this bill would predominantly affect my riding in northwestern British Columbia, and as we have been dealing with this issue for more than a generation, there is some authority in terms of the people I represent and for whom I speak.

Here is a fundamental question we have been asking for years. The northern gateway pipeline, and now the Kinder Morgan pipeline, proposed to move diluted bitumen through a pipeline to the west coast. A question we have been consistently asking of the former Conservative government and the current Liberal government is what happens when this stuff gets into water and whether they can clean it up. Diluted bitumen has different properties than traditional, conventional oil, and the best knowledge we have so far is that it cannot be cleaned up because it sinks.

Does my friend have anything to reassure us, or even assure, because no one actually has a lot of assurance right now, that in the event of a spill from a pipeline or a tanker in the ocean we have current technology that would clean up even a scintilla of the oil that actually gets into the environment?

[Ben Lobb, Conservative, Huron—Bruce, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I have a high level of regard for the member. He sat on the committee for many of the meetings while we were studying the bill.

I began my speech by saying that I am not a scientist and I would never proclaim to be. Although there are many members in the House who think they are scientists, I would probably want to check their degrees and make sure they are in fact scientists.

I know for a fact that the member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley is not 100% pleased with this bill. He and I respectfully have different views on this bill and what it should do, but from his perspective, too, he probably has questions about consultation, questions about the schedule, and many other questions. Here is a member who would like to see the bill go further, and he has issues with it. That is fair. He has not had his questions answered, either.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, today we have heard many intelligent comments about Bill C-48 from many people with an extreme amount of knowledge on this topic, and there have been many questions of those people. Maybe that leaves me with rhetoric. I do not know what is left to say, but I will try.

Trade has always been a pivotal component of life in Canada. Long ago, before European settlement, indigenous peoples traded prolifically. On the British Columbia coast, much of that trade was conducted by water. For example, the Haida Nation made use of large commercial canoes to achieve great prosperity along the Pacific coast. It is quite remarkable that this legislation makes such a radical departure from Canadian history. In Canada we have some of the most lucrative trading goods in the history of humanity at our disposal, namely oil and gas, but we cannot trade them, because we cannot access the market to do it. It seems a betrayal of Canada's historical legacy as a trading nation.

Unfortunately, this oil tanker moratorium appears to be just another stage of the government's plan to phase out Canada's energy sector. We desperately need to diversify Canada's export markets for oil and gas, yet Bill C-48 would take further steps to limit access to tidewater for Canadian oil. It is not just a tanker moratorium; it is a pipeline moratorium. The government has increasingly demonstrated that its agenda is dictated by radical activists and the foreign donors who support them. These people want Canada to be nothing more than a giant nature preserve.

Of course, we do have vast areas of pristine wilderness that I think all Canadians are proud of. I have been on the coast of Newfoundland all the way down to New Brunswick. It is a beautiful coastline. I was probably on the Pacific Rim, which is now the Pacific Rim National Park, before many people in the House were born. I have been on the tide pools and the coast and the beautiful Pacific part of Vancouver Island. Some members are older, which the minister might be, but some of us are a little older than he is.

I know that the Prime Minister was just in Europe, in France and Paris, and he apologized about being so slow to phase out the energy sector. It might have shocked his audience to find that Canada is not just one large nature preserve. People live here in Canada and people across the country work in the Canadian energy industry, and those people are being hurt by the government's disregard of the Canadian energy sector. In my riding of Bow River, the job losses have been catastrophic. People need pipelines with oil going to foreign markets. These people are highly skilled and highly trained. They may have found other jobs in other sectors, but they are much lower paying and are not using their highly trained skills.

Those foreign markets need oil. Global demand is growing. It is projected to keep growing at least for the next 30 years, especially in the Asia-Pacific region that we need to reach from the west coast. Let us get our economy back on track and meet this global demand.

As it stands, we are selling our oil at a huge discount to the United States. The U.S. sells it back to us to refine in New Brunswick refineries at the full market price. It is like building a car in Canada for $30,000 but having only one market, which offers us $15,000, and we take it, and then they sell it back to us for $30,000, because we have no choice.

By some estimates, the losses amount to at least a large school a day and a major hospital a week being built in the United States instead of in Canada. Hundreds of millions of dollars are lost because we cannot diversify our energy exports. It is a ridiculous situation. It is embarrassing to our country on the international stage when we look at countries that trade. Despite this totally unacceptable situation, we have learned that the government is funding anti-pipeline activists through the Canada summer jobs program, yet in my constituency, summer camps cannot get any money for summer jobs.

One constituent told me today that if people are convicted of obstructing justice, they should immediately be put on a no-fly list. They could not fly if they were convicted of obstructing justice while protesting. That is an interesting concept.

The government can dismiss the reality with its favourite talking points all it wants, but the issue is a lot more complicated than a talking point. Oil products are already shipped safely in and out of ports across Atlantic Canada and B.C. If we have to distill it down to a sound bite in the way the government likes to, let us put it like this: Venezuelan oil is shipped up the St. Lawrence to Montreal. If both those coasts were travelled on both sides of the St. Lawrence, one would find some of the most natural beauty in our country. It is very different on one side and the other, yet we are shipping large oil tankers all the way up the St. Lawrence to Montreal.

We are shipping Saudi Arabian oil to the east coast through the many islands to get to the refineries in St. John. If one has travelled on those islands and seen the beautiful coast, one knows we have skilled pilots on the west coast. It is tricky to get through to St. John's as well, but we are allowed to do that. Canadian oil is okay for Vancouver but not northern B.C. It does not make much sense when one puts it like that, but that is exactly what this legislation would implement.

This bill is yet another signal to investors that Canada's energy sector should be avoided. That is a travesty, especially since our former Conservative government already implemented responsible tanker safety regulations and established a world-class tanker safety system in 2014. That legislation modernized Canada's navigation system. It enhanced area response planning. However, we have had colleagues say we could do more. Well, we could do more. It built marine safety capacity in aboriginal communities and ensured polluters pay for spills and damages.

What we should be doing is building upon that successful safety record. Let us build more. We should be harnessing Canadian ingenuity and the great skills that our pilots have on the west coast. We should be collaborating with regional and indigenous stakeholders to develop even safer mechanisms for our coasts. We could maybe export that to the rest of the world. That is the logical next step, not a moratorium that would prevent any possibility of progress. Furthermore, a voluntary exclusion zone of 100 kilometres for oil tankers travelling from Alaska has already been in place since 1985 just beside this area.

Look at the current investment climate. Why pass legislation that does nothing more than remind investors of the government's attitude toward oil and gas? I guess what Maslow said was right. He said that when someone only has a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail. This legislation is nothing more than a nail in the coffin of investor confidence in Canada.

Some $80 billion in investment has now been driven out of Canada. I hear about this in my constituency. That is a huge number, but the devastating impact of the government's attitude toward oil and gas is not limited to investors. The indigenous nations mentioned earlier have sued the federal and provincial government over this tanker ban. They argue that it is an unjustified infringement on their aboriginal rights and title. In fact, 30 first nations started an online campaign to raise money against this ban. It does not seem that the government was able to convince them in the consultation process that it was a good idea.

I have had the opportunity to meet with several first nations elders. Their views on energy development are not as uniform as the government would have us believe. Many I spoke with did not want to be told what they could and could not develop. They want the autonomy to make their own decisions in the best interest of their people. They view this as a lack of consultation and a form of colonialism, as they mentioned to me. Many first nations leaders want the right to develop their resources in the way they choose.

Even if this legislation receives royal assent, U.S. tankers travelling from Alaska to Washington would continue to travel up and down the B.C. coast. This is not about the tankers; it is about tying the hands of future governments and preventing pipeline construction. It is a pipeline moratorium under a different name. It is the opposite action to what the government should be taking. It needs to send positive signals to international and Canadian energy investors. It needs to actively champion the diversification of energy exports. This bill would not do that, and I cannot support it.

[Marjolaine Boutin-Sweet, NDP, Hochelaga, QC]

Mr. Speaker, at the beginning of his speech, the member spoke about diversifying markets for oil and natural gas.

I would like to ask him the following question: instead, why not work on diversifying clean energy sources and the jobs that go with them, especially since we know that oil is a non-renewable, finite resource?

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, just after 2000, I read a book that talked about the declining numbers with respect to gas and oil in the world, that it was very limited, and that within 20 years it would be gone. Thanks to technology and innovation, and tremendous people in the oil and gas sector, those numbers in that book are total garbage now because we continue to find more. When members talk about finite resources, what exists today as far as gas and oil is concerned is twice what it was in 2000. Therefore, I am not sure about the prediction that it is limited, because we have proven that wrong in the last 15 years, because of great guys with innovation skills in the oil and gas sector who keep finding more resources in our globe.

[Elizabeth May, Green, Saanich—Gulf Islands, BC]

Mr. Speaker, there are a number of points in my friend from Bow River's presentation that require a bit of a fact check.

There is a big difference on the west coast of B.C., particularly between Haida Gwaii and the coast. Hecate Strait particularly is an extremely active body of water. There is nothing like it or comparable, for instance, on the St. Lawrence Seaway or in eastern Canada. That is a bit of a backgrounder for why the moratorium was in place from 1972 until 2012, because of the specific threats to B.C.'s coast that oil tankers posed at that time.

I particularly want to take the member up on this idea that we have all this oil and gas, and that it keeps expanding. He may be quite right. We never thought we could frack Bakken shale, and we did not think we could pull bitumen up out of the oil sands, and that has expanded the available petroleum resources.

What is shrinking, what is finite, and what is actually overloaded is the space in the shared atmosphere for warming gases. If we look at any of the carbon budgets put forward by the efforts globally of scientists, we cannot afford to expand our fossil fuel use at all. We have to shrink it rapidly. I would ask him if he is familiar with recent science, and if he understands that a global catastrophe awaits those who think we can increase the volume of fossil fuels we use.

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I know my colleague is extremely well versed on this particular topic and would have a much more significant depth and breadth of issues to deal with it.

What I do know is that I have met some of the most important people in terms of their skills, knowledge, and innovation. I believe that we have tremendous people on this globe who have found ways to do things innovatively that we did not even think of 15 years ago, maybe even 10 years ago. They have the ability to find different methods of dealing with those issues, such as the catastrophe that was mentioned, and we can solve those issues. We have tremendous people on this planet who can do that, and I believe in the people who live here.

[Dean Allison, Conservative, Niagara West, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I sometimes feel that the Prime Minister is the captain of the Titanic and all these members are rearranging the deck chairs as they head toward an iceberg. Why I say that is the whole issue of direct foreign investment.

I had the chance to meet with 20 businesses from the Canadian Chamber of Commerce. These are large companies that have factories here in Canada. One company in particular said that it had six plants in Canada. It could assure us that, because it has other investments around the world, it will probably never invest in Canada again. That is troubling.

What is going on here in terms of direct foreign investment, in terms of uncertainty, and why do these issues matter as it relates to money being invested In Canada from other parts of the world?

[Martin Shields, Conservative, Bow River, AB]

Mr. Speaker, my riding runs up beside Calgary, and we know what is happening in Calgary. When the president of Cenovus says that his office is now in Denver, we know what is happening. It may not have moved its head office yet, but we know what is going to happen.

I personally know a number of people in the oil sector who are now working in Texas because they know that is where the investment is. A number of highly skilled people are leaving their families to search for jobs and may end up in Australia or Africa. They are leaving because there is no work here because the investment has gone somewhere else in the world. It has left Canada and it will be a while before it comes back.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

Resuming debate.

The question is on Motion No. 1. A vote on this motion also applies to Motion No. 2.

The question is on the motion. Is it the pleasure of the House to adopt the motion?

[Some hon. members]

Agreed.

No.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

All those in favour of the motion will please say yea.

[Some hon. members]

Yea.

[The Deputy Speaker, Conservative, Bruce Stanton]

All those opposed will please say nay.