Debates of June 11th, 2018

Report Stage

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Mr. Speaker, in those nine years from 2006 to 2015, when we were in government, there was consultation. There were these changes, and there was a coast to coast tour on salmon. We started on the west coast and ended on the east coast. There is a problem with salmon. It has not developed over one year. It has been over many years. The previous Conservative Parliament was committed to trying to find those answers. Those answers are not only one issue. It is the whole issue of how we are protecting the environment and enhancing the environment.

Unfortunately, Bill C-68 will not solve that problem through rhetoric, because it is not science-based. I believe everyone on this side is committed to doing whatever is necessary to enhance the environment for the salmon, but it is a problem that may take many years of commitment from all sides to find the solutions.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Mr. Speaker, sitting on the fisheries committee, I had an opportunity to question many of the witnesses who came in as we looked at aspects of the changes that were made back in 2012 versus the gaps that people perceived. Notwithstanding my friend's comments about consultation, when I asked a panel of people from industry, particularly industry on the Prairies, in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, they certainly agreed they had been consulted. However, we consistently asked members of the indigenous community what kind of consultation they had been involved in, and they consistently told us that they had not been consulted. Not only that, during the course of our hearings we were constantly challenged by the Conservative members about accepting submissions from indigenous groups who had prepared material with financial assistance from the department for other purposes.

It was very clear that during our most recent deliberations they were not interested in hearing that input from indigenous communities, and it would not appear that they very actively sought it out when they did their process. I am wondering if my friend could comment on those reflections.

[Mark Warawa, Conservative, Langley—Aldergrove, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member. He is in a neighbouring riding, and I think we live in one of the most beautiful parts of the world.

It is interesting that we invite the witnesses and often the Liberals will invite people knowing what the answers are likely to be, but he said it was perceived that they had not been consulted. Then he connected the dots and said the previous Conservative government was not interested because there is this perceived lack of interest. In fact, science will show us, if he goes to Hansard he will see the long list of people who actually were called as witnesses, who were given the opportunity to testify over those many years before those changes were made.

There was, therefore, a massive amount of consultation. What we heard often was that sometimes within the process they found it frustrating when a provincial assessment would be done and finished and then there would be a federal environmental assessment. The same witnesses were called twice. They asked to just be called once because they did not like being called twice, and asked if people had not listened to them the first time. That was a common concern.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to speak tonight to Bill C-68, an act to amend the Fisheries Act and other acts in consequence, and there are some consequences.

In the 2015 election campaign, the Liberals promised to strengthen the role of parliamentary committees. The Prime Minister promised Canadians that committees would be independent, giving them the ability to better scrutinize legislation and “provide reliable, non-partisan research” through their reporting to Parliament. Two years after the election, the same Liberals introduced Bill C-68, legislation that would bring in a number of changes to the Fisheries Act without considering a single expert's advice from stakeholders or the committee study of the bill.

The proposed changes ignore some of the major findings from a report of the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans that was presented to the House in February 2017. On September 19, 2016, the fisheries committee agreed to the following motion, which stated:

...review and study the scope of application of the Fisheries Act, and specifically the serious harm to fish prohibition; how the prohibition is implemented to protect fish and fish habitat; the capacity of Fisheries and Oceans Canada to deliver on fish and fish habitat protection through project review, monitoring, and enforcement; the definitions of serious harm to fish and commercial, recreational, and Aboriginal fisheries; the use of regulatory authorities under the Fisheries Act; and other related provisions of the act, and provide its recommendations in a report to the House....

The committee convened 10 meetings in Ottawa from October 31 to December 12, 2016, before presenting the report to the House of Commons in February 2017. Overall, the committee heard testimony from 50 different witnesses during the study and received over 188 submitted briefing notes. It was a comprehensive and fact-based study with experts from almost every province putting forward policy suggestions. If the government were truly committed to strengthening the role of parliamentary committees, this study should have formed the basis for Bill C-68 with all of that consultation.

The Liberals essentially ignored the committee's report, including one of its most important recommendations, which stated:

Any revision of the Fisheries Act should review and refine the previous definition of HADD [the harmful alteration, disruption or destruction of fish habitat] due to the previous definition’s vulnerability to being applied in an inconsistent manner and the limiting effect it had on government agencies in their management of fisheries and habitats in the interest of fish productivity.

Following hours of testimony from the 50 witnesses and briefing notes from more than 180 associations, groups, and individuals, it was agreed that a return to HADD was not ideal, and that, should the government return to HADD, it would need to be refined and reviewed. Bill C-68 ignores this recommendation and introduces a return to HADD.

HADD is referred to in proposed subsection 35(1) of the legislation, which states, “No person shall carry on any work, undertaking or activity that results in the harmful alteration, disruption or destruction of fish habitat.” Essentially, this means that any sort of development that could be harmful to, alter, disrupt, or destroy any fish habitat could be stopped or not approved by the government, taking us back to one of the major issues we have seen, especially with municipalities and the concerns they had when they tried to make any type of alterations. They would have to go to DFO and the provincial governments to make sure they were satisfying conditions that they knew, on the ground, were not necessary. It added costs.

I had the opportunity earlier to question the member for Cape Breton—Canso about the concerns municipalities had. He indicated that they are getting so much money that they really do not care whether or not that is the case. Of course, I think they would question just how quickly that money is coming out, but the concerns they have are still there. Going back to a system that does not respect the rights of communities and municipalities, and the concerns about agriculture and different groups that some members discussed earlier, it is no wonder we are having trouble getting different types of projects off the ground. This is a major concern, and hopefully I will have a chance to discuss that later.

As the committee report noted, this section was applied inconsistently and it was unclear. The concern is always that developers are often bogged down in these battles over the vague guidelines. For example, there was no clearly defined outline of what constituted a fish habitat, or what was seen to be harmful, in the previous version of the act. There was no clear path forward, and HADD became an obstacle to development, growth, and investment within the industry. It was becoming a consistent roadblock for projects and growth.

We need to listen to expert advice, instead of politically motivated advice. In the debate over the bill's provisions, stakeholders have been flagging this proposed change as problematic. The reinstatement of these measures will result in greater uncertainties for existing and new facilities, and undue delay. This can very well discourage investment at a time when Canadians and Canadian businesses need it the most. The key component here is certainly.

A few months ago, I had an opportunity to be with the trade committee in southeast Asia, and in some of the discussions we had with fund managers, we wondered how we could, in good conscience, tell people to come to Canada and invest. That is shameful when we think of the tens of billions in project dollars that have already left, and the fact that people are starting to say that Canada is not a place for an investment dollar. It is not as though an oil and gas project is not going to be developed. Otherwise, it will be developed, but it will be developed somewhere else in competition with us. For those who suggest that this is going to help with greenhouse gases and so on, this just changes it from an opportunity for us to use our natural resources, to some other place taking advantage of that.

Certainly, the same situation has occurred with the Kinder Morgan discussion, in which the government used $4.5 billion to purchase a 65-year-old pipeline, and gave that company the opportunity to go someplace else to build pipelines to bring someone else's product into eastern Canada. How is that ever going to change anything?

That is the major concern I have, and people see this as one of the major issues with government overreach, which is certainly the case here.

Let me be clear: Conservatives wholeheartedly support the protection of our oceans and fisheries. Our previous changes to the act brought a fine balance between encouraging growth in the industry and responsible conservation. Our previous changes to the act also enacted provisions that provided transparency in the decision-making process, and provided a level of certainty to those invested in the act. Unlike the Liberals, Conservatives listen to the people on the ground, instead of importing ideas and policies from Liberal insiders, foreign interest groups, and radical eco-activists. As Conservatives, we take our cues from Canadians, and we understand the importance of finding the right balance.

It was for this specific reason that in 2012, our former Conservative government removed HADD and replaced it with the following:

35 (1) No person shall carry on any work, undertaking or activity that results in serious harm to fish that are part of a commercial, recreational or Aboriginal fishery, or to fish that support such a fishery.

This definition was much clearer, and was more universally accepted because it struck the important balance required between development and conservation.

There are also changes within this bill that would undermine transparency and due process by allowing the ministers to withhold critical information from interested proponents. How is that transparent?

Another change I am worried about is the fact that the bill would allow the minister to establish an advisory panel with taxpayer-funded members and panellists, but does not set the guidelines or limitations for its use. Without any guidelines, these panels may be subject to abuse, especially if they are established by politically motivated individuals.

On behalf of the many Canadians and industry experts against the new changes, I join my Conservative colleagues in urging the Liberal government to listen to expert advice and reverse this senseless change, revisit the return of HADD, and amend the legislation to ensure that economic development and environmental protection go hand in hand and not head to head.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Mr. Speaker, common sense should be a big part of public policy, and specifically so if we are going to be asking for farmers and municipalities to work with the federal government. As a city councillor, I remember in 2008 we came across a case in which we could not build a stairway to provide much needed and much wanted access to Campbell Mountain. This is because there was a water hazard that was identified by DFO as being fish habitat, and because of its proximity to the stairway, it said we could not build, even though we had money for developers to do so.

By the changes that are presented here, does he fear that farmers and municipalities are going to go back to making their case to DFO, which they do not feel listens to them? Do these changes provide practical ways for them to address problems in cases of flooding on farm fields or in cases in which municipalities want important access done properly?

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Mr. Speaker, there are a lot of things that can happen, especially being involved in agriculture. I remember a time when we got six inches of rain in about an hour. That changed a lot of waterways. Those are the sorts of things that happen. It is ongoing. These issues that occur are ongoing. Farmers have to be able to deal with them. They have to know whether they can go back in and rehabilitate that area. Sometimes it might takes years before that can happen.

These are the issues that are always there. The member had an example of a great project that had an opportunity to move forward, with all good intentions for the environment, and then they simply had someone with a badge come over and say, “No. You're not going to be allowed to do that. We're going to make sure that we shut that down.”

That is the cause of uncertainty we see throughout Canada and is one of the reasons we are having so much difficulty convincing people that this is a place they can invest in. We have to look at this. We have to look for certainty. I think that is critical. That is a great example that was just presented.

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

Mr. Speaker, we have heard referenced a number of times in this place that municipalities across Canada were upset with the Fisheries Act, and that is why the Harper government acted to change it.

I just want to reference this again. I mentioned it earlier in debate. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities dealt with this issue in 2012. They brought before the Federation of Canadian Municipalities' annual general meeting a motion to urge former prime minister Harper to protect habitat and to take those sections out of Bill C-38 that weakened habitat protections. The motion was brought forward by a British Columbian, and former Conservative minister of fisheries, the hon. Tom Siddon, who happened to be an elected official within his own area of British Columbia. It was brought to the floor of the FCM, where it passed.

Where municipalities have weighed in on this issue, they have called for the protection of fish habitat. There is no question that there can be times when there are conflicts for some rural municipalities, but those issues have been largely dealt with in Bill C-68. It certainly has the support of municipalities across the country.

[Earl Dreeshen, Conservative, Red Deer—Mountain View, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for her comment, her discussion about the FCM, and some of the statements that were presented by individuals at the time.

Sometimes people get it wrong. I used to listen to David Suzuki as well, but I do not anymore. Sometimes we have to find out what the motivation is between individuals and the statements they are making. Certainly we have to make sure that we are protecting the environment, but we also have to make sure that we are able to expand our economy in such a way that we will be able to have resource money to do the kinds of things Canadians need to have done, such as build their hospitals, build their schools, and make sure that we have a safety net. That is the critical part.

We cannot just say that we should shut the country and let other countries do it. We know that they are going to, and we are going to be the Boy Scouts. That is not necessary.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to rise and speak on Bill C-68 tonight. The comment that was made earlier this evening from one of my colleagues across the floor was that he was happy that a member from the west coast or a coastal riding was getting up and speaking about this. I am not picking on him for any reason, but I think it highlights one of the issues we are having with this bill. There seems to be a lack of knowledge or scope when it comes to our friends in the Liberal government not understanding the ramifications and implications that the decisions they are making with this bill will have on every region of the country. That is why we are seeing many of the rural members of Parliament from the Conservative side getting up to speak to this bill, because it will have very real and profound consequences on our rural communities.

I want to back things up prior to 2012, when these changes to the Navigable Waters Act and the Fisheries Act were made by the previous Conservative government. I recall I was a journalist at that time in a small community newspaper throughout southern Alberta. I remember covering numerous council and town hall meetings hosted by rural municipalities that were having significant issues when when it came to dealing with culverts, small bridges, drainage ditches, seasonal waterways, and irrigation canals, and the hoops, bureaucracy, and red tape they had to go through to try to complete some of those projects.

Prior to 2012, municipalities had to go through labour-intensive regulatory requirements when it came to areas of what was then called “navigable waters”. They were forced to endure lengthy delays, because the Department of Fisheries and Oceans was inundated with thousands of applications from municipalities that were waiting for it to come and make decisions on their projects, not to mention the length of those delays. It proved extremely costly to these municipalities that were having to endure these very long wait times. I would think many of us who have rural municipalities in our ridings understand that many of these municipalities are extremely small. They simply do not have the financial or staffing resources to be able to handle the workload and amount of paperwork that comes along with a Department of Fisheries and Oceans assessment. Therefore, our rural municipalities were coming to the previous Conservative government with these problems and issues with respect to managing their own lands. That is when the previous Conservative government came up with these changes to try to reduce some of that regulatory burden. We wanted to turn the focus to ensuring that the protections in that legislation focused on the most critical fish and fish habitat in navigable waters. At the same time, we wanted to take some of that regulatory burden off some of the waterways that probably never had fish habitat and would never have fish habitat, but were still under the same regime and regulatory layers of bureaucracy that any river, stream, ocean, or lake would come under, when we were just talking about drainage ditches and irrigation canals, for example.

When we talk about some of the changes that were made, I think we need to highlight that the act maintained a very strong regulatory regime and protected very important fish habitat, but it had more of a practical scope. It reduced that administrative burden on not only municipalities, but also the Department of Fisheries and Oceans. It had now freed up a lot of its time and resources to focus on the most important cases and waterways without having to deal with very minor projects for municipalities. However, it also empowered municipalities to be the environmental stewards of their own waterways. When it comes to those types of projects and waterways, who would be better to be the stewards of those lands than the municipalities, the councils, and their staff, who are on the ground each and every day? They know the history. They have that local knowledge. They know whether it is fish habitat. They know if it is a seasonal waterway. Certainly, they know that better than a bureaucrat in Ottawa. Therefore, I think it was a win-win situation for the municipalities, as well as the Department of Fisheries and Oceans.

Now we are faced with these changes in Bill C-68, which would expand the definition of fish habitat, expanding it even wider and more broad than it was prior to 2012. That is very disconcerting in the fact that it was burdensome and difficult to deal with and almost impossible to enforce prior to 2012. How difficult will this be when not only we restore it to the previous definition, but have even expanded that definition to a much wider scope. It has re-engaged a lot of those same regulations, but it also introduces something that is new, which is designated projects. This will include any projects within a category that could impact any waterway, whether it has a specific impact on a known fish habitat or not.

What is even more concerning for our stakeholders, municipalities, farmers, and ranchers is the fact that there is no definition on what a designated project is. This is really a larger narrative that we have seen from the Liberal government. It rushed through this legislation without doing all the homework and all the background work first so that it tabled a complete document that everyone could understand exactly where they stood. The legislation is very clear. The rules and regulations are very clear. There are still some very large holes in it with which stakeholders are very concerned.

The other issue, which is a large narrative with some of the Liberal legislation we have seen, is the minister would have more expanded and broader powers. This is very similar to what we have seen with Bill C-69.

We now have proponents in the energy sector that are divesting themselves of the energy sector because they do not feel there is a clear path to success. If they do apply for a project, whether it is pipeline, a mine, a forestry initiative, LNG, they could go through the regulatory process, through every environmental review, could pass all of those things, but at several steps during the process, the Minister of Environment and Climate Change would have the authority to step in and tell them to go back to the beginning. The minister could cut it off right there and tell them the project was not in the public interest or it was not something that could be supported. That would be the end of that project.

There is no clear definition of how to reach success or if there is a definitive pathway that people would know their projects would not succeed. We cannot have those types of projects at the whim of one person. That is very similar to what we see in Bill C-68 where the minister would have similar powers.

This is a crippling burden for municipalities that do not have the resources or the infrastructure to deal with these things. Imagine the burden and the impact it will have on farmers and ranchers who absolutely do not have the wherewithal to handle some of these issues.

Prior to 2012, a farmer in northern Alberta explained to me that he had a spring run-off area that went through his field. He would put a couple of 2x4s down during the spring so he could drive his machinery over it when he sprayed or seeded. However, Fisheries and Oceans came to him before 2012 and said that it was a waterway because it could float a canoe or a kayak. Certainly it could for about two weeks in the spring, but the rest of the time it was dry. He had to build a bridge over that seasonal spring runoff area. We are not talking about a river for the last pirate of Saskatchewan to float down the plain. This was simply a spring run-off. He was very concerned that he would have to go back to this. This will very burdensome to him.

Again, this goes back to the narrative that the Liberal government implements knee-jerk legislation, without doing the due diligence, without having an idea of what the ramifications will be and the unintended consequences, or doing the economic impact analysis of these decisions and what they will have on other sectors.

This is again another attack on rural Canadians. It is not science-based, front of package labelling, food guide, carbon tax. These changes will impact our rural communities, farmers, and ranchers who are struggling just to stay in business. Now there is a potential trade war with the United States.

For farmers and ranchers in rural municipalities, their livelihoods depend on healthy waterways, lakes, rivers, streams, aquifers. No one would take better care of these waterways than those who are on the ground, rural Canadians, farmers, and ranchers.

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

Mr. Speaker, I have a great amount of respect for my colleague from Foothills. Certainly as well as being rural Canadians, we have a lot in common.

My concern goes back to when the Fisheries Act was gutted in 2012, and when the former government removed protections, especially HADD, we saw a huge number of forestry companies moving their log sorts to the water. When they do that, a lot of the sediment and bark ends up on the bottom of the river, especially in the Somass River, and it becomes a mat and that mat is a huge problem. Those pristine estuaries are very critical salmon habitat; they are important for chinook on their way out, they are important for sockeye on the way in. As we know, with climate change we are seeing warming of our waters. A lot of our sockeye coming back up cannot go too high because they cannot be in too warm water, and now they cannot go too low because there is not enough oxygen because it is being choked out by the matting that is being created there.

With the restoration of HADD, we are hearing huge concerns from people—this is not a partisan issue; this is is about our fish— about how loose things are when it comes to practices of moving our wood to our water. How can my colleague justify not having HADD when it is critical? Right now, unless a fish is being killed that is of commercial value and it is a commercial fish, no individuals are going to get charged when they behave like this and there are practices that are being implemented like this. What does the member propose? What is he going to do to help protect our fish in those important estuaries?

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I share my colleague's respect as well. I have always enjoyed his interventions.

He said early on in his question, “this is not a partisan issue; this is about our fish”, but his first comment was “they” allegedly gutted the Fisheries Act. That is just not the case. We did not have a single witness who came to committee who could find any proof that the changes to the Fisheries Act and to the Navigable Waters Act in 2012 had any impact on the health of Canada's fisheries. The member knows that the changes that were made in good faith were there to protect our fisheries. They are being protected. There is no evidence of that to the contrary. What we are saying is we do not want to go back to the same burdensome red tape and regulations that were really impacting and have a detrimental impact on our rural Canadians as well as our farmers and ranchers.

[Ken Hardie, Liberal, Fleetwood—Port Kells, BC]

Mr. Speaker, a couple of times in this debate, we have had members of the opposite side say that at no time during our witness testimony did we hear any evidence of any damage as a result of the changes that were made back in 2012. It may not have come up during those deliberations, but we just heard, courtesy of our friend from Vancouver Island, the kinds of damages that could take place and many more may have been observed but not recorded because nobody was breaking the law and indeed thanks to cuts there were not necessarily the enforcement officers or others to even keep an eye on it.

However, the essence of this review of the Fisheries Act goes right to the point that our friend from the Prairies was making. We heard from the Saskatchewan Association of Rural Municipalities about the hurdles that people had to jump through to get even a culvert rebuilt or a bridge repaired. I personally and many of my colleagues agreed that not dialling that back to the pre-2012 regulations would mark an improvement, would help to modernize the act. The other thing that came along, though, and it goes back to some earlier comments about the involvement of indigenous people, was more of a focus on indigenous knowledge and indigenous participation in helping to monitor the health of our waterways. I wonder if my friend across the way would consider both those developments as useful modernization of the act.

[John Barlow, Conservative, Foothills, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I forgot to mention too for my friend from Vancouver Island that I really do appreciate his passion for his area.

To the question from my colleague, we are talking about the damage that could take place. No one saw any damage. There is a lot of innuendo and this is my problem with the Liberals' process in this bill. Everything is would have, should have, could have but it maybe actually did not happen at all. Nothing is science-based. If they want to make changes on this and legislation is going to have this kind of an impact on Canadians, then they should make sure they do their due diligence, make sure it is science-based, and make sure they do the consultation and that the changes they are making absolutely impact what they are trying to solve.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I will begin with a story. I will roll back to pre-2012.

My community of Abbotsford is the foremost farming community in the province of British Columbia. Somewhere in the order of 20% of all farm-gate revenues emanate from our community. Much of that is from two beautiful areas with A1-quality soil, Sumas Prairie and Matsqui Prairie, where there are all kinds of different farming operations under way.

I used to be a city councillor in Abbotsford. One of our farmers, who I will call Henry, was one of the pillars of our community. He was one of the originals in our community, one of the pioneers. He had farmed Sumas Prairie all his life. One day, he came into my office in a real fit of anger. He related to me that he had been on his land cleaning ditches that he himself had dug. A couple of years later, of course, those ditches were filling in with leaves, twigs, and other debris. He wanted to clear them so that his property could drain properly. Anyone who knows Sumas Prairie knows that it is an area that needs to be properly drained. It is a former lake bed, and it needs to be managed properly. However, Henry was in my office very upset, because as he was cleaning his ditch, a fisheries officer had approached him. By the way, he was a fisheries officer with a gun. He had accosted Henry and said, “Sir, don't you dare touch that ditch anymore. You're harming fish habitat.”

Of course, Henry said that this was a ditch he dug for drainage purposes, and there were no fish in this ditch. “It is fish habitat we are protecting”, said the fisheries officer, “and Mr. Farmer, you're not entitled to do anything with that ditch of yours.”

We heard this from farmers across Abbotsford. My colleague, the member for Langley—Aldergrove, who served on city council with me, can verify those facts. Of course, city council had no power. This was federal legislation under which these officers were acting. That is why our former Conservative government, in 2012, stepped up to the plate and addressed this problem. We removed the focus on what at that time was fish habitat, and we replaced it with a focus on protecting fish, because that is what it is all about.

In light of the situation I just described, our government first of all looked at what is called the harmful alteration, disruption, or destruction of fish habitat, or HADD. We said that HADD was the wrong standard to apply. What we should be applying is any activity that results in serious harm to fish, not fish habitat, that are part of a commercial, recreational, or aboriginal fishery or to the fish that support such a fishery. That is the way the new legislation read, and it was warmly received.

My colleague for Saanich—Gulf Islands, the leader of the Green Party, suggested that Canadian municipalities did not support our 2012 amendments at all. That is patently false. What we should do is ask those of us who were in municipal government at that time, or in the years leading up to it, and we can tell members exactly why this legislation was introduced, and we had the strong support of municipalities across Canada.

Another one of the challenges of the legislation we have before us, which is a big step backwards, is the use of what is called the precautionary principle, which is basically better safe than sorry. The precautionary principle sounds great. We should always be safe rather than sorry. The problem is that it does not work in real life.

I refer the House to an article written in 2011 by Jonathan Adler, in which he talks about the better safe than sorry approach, the precautionary principle. He says, “We all accept this as a commonsense maxim. But can it also guide public policy? [Some people] think so, and argue that formalizing a more 'precautionary' approach to...health and environmental...will better safeguard human well-being and the world around us.”

He goes on to say:

If only it were that easy. Simply put, the precautionary principle is not a sound basis for public policy. At the broadest level of generality, the principle is unobjectionable, but it provides no meaningful guidance to pressing policy questions. In a public policy context, “better safe than sorry” is a fairly vacuous instruction.

Taken literally, the precautionary principle is either wholly arbitrary or incoherent. In its stronger formulation, the principle actually has the potential to do harm.

He goes on to say, “Efforts to impose the principle through regulatory policy”, which is what our friends are doing here, but they are doing it in legislation, “inevitably accommodate competing concerns or become a Trojan Horse for other ideological crusades.”

The problem with the precautionary principle is that it becomes a Trojan Horse for ideological crusades. Let me give the House a great example.

We have a government here that has been beholden to the environmental movement. In fact, the chief of staff to the Prime Minister, Gerald Butts, used to lead the World Wildlife Fund in Canada. Think about it. When we have a precautionary principle, it is people that have influence in government that are able to, unnecessarily through their influence, direct decisions in a way that suits their interests. If we have an ideological predilection in a certain direction, like Mr. Butts does, imagine how quickly we would find ourselves in a situation where it is speculation and ideology that replace true science as a basis for making decisions.

This legislation would establish remunerated advisory panels. When Liberals establish advisory panels, especially ones that are remunerated, they are used basically to allow insiders and friends to benefit from government.

Look at the surf clam issue in Newfoundland where the fisheries minister intervened. He provided special gifts to his friends by taking a surf clam licence away from one company that had pioneered the surf clam business in Newfoundland and giving it to another company that had connections to insiders in government and to friends and family.

What was the end result? This new company, which did not even exist and is still not incorporated, had no boat. Imagine that. It had no boat, but was awarded this licence, thereby depriving the people of Grand Banks, Newfoundland, of their opportunity to benefit, to have livelihoods, to have income from this business.

This is what happens when legislation like Bill C-68, which would amend the Fisheries Act, is twisted in a way that benefits the Liberal government, insiders, and friends of the government.

Canada as a country can do better.

[Francis Scarpaleggia, Liberal, Lac-Saint-Louis, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I enjoyed listening to the member's speech. As always, it was delivered with a lot of rigour.

The member said that the government's policy is not based on science. How was removing protections in the Fisheries Act in 2012 a decision based on science? Was it really based on ideology, the ideology that all environmental regulations impede business and should be removed because the economy and the environment do not go hand in hand? How is that not an ideological position?

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know if the member was actually listening to my speech, but that is not at all what I suggested.

The member has suggested that somehow the former Conservative government, in 2012, removed scientific protections. Nothing could be further from the truth. The changes that happened in 2012 were improvements to protection, which focused on what Canadians expect us to focus on, protecting fish. That is something the Liberals never could understand, and still do not understand. Today, they are taking a step backwards, again.

The changes in 2012 were all about applying science. The precautionary principle that the Liberal government is now introducing has nothing to do with science. It has to do with ideology and speculation. By its own definition, if we read the definition of the precautionary principle, it has to nothing to do with science. It is simply saying, “Better safe than sorry.”

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

Mr. Speaker, when my colleague was in government, the government commissioned Justice Cohen to study the decline of sockeye salmon in the Fraser River. One of the recommendations, recommendation 3, was:

The Government of Canada should remove from the Department of Fisheries and Oceans’ mandate the promotion of salmon farming as an industry and farmed salmon as a product.

DFO continues to promote salmon farming, the industry and the product, but it also has the mandate of protecting our fish.

Even the Pacific Salmon Foundation, which I am sure the member would agree has been a great steward and advocate for wild fish in British Columbia, put out a release on May 9:

The Pacific Salmon Foundation (PSF) believes that British Columbia and Canada must put wild Pacific salmon first and that a move to closed-containment salmon aquaculture is recommended.

It is clear that the Liberals have left this absent in this new legislation. The Conservative government, before, did not implement the recommendation of Justice Cohen. Maybe the member could speak to whether or not he supports this recommendation by Justice Cohen.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I never expected to get that question in this debate, but it is a good one. We were just talking about it.

I can tell the member that I am very familiar with the work of the Pacific Salmon Foundation. In fact, I recently spoke to Brian Riddell, the executive director of the foundation. We talked about that very issue, the recommendation Justice Cohen had made. We were looking at that very carefully.

Pacific salmon are iconic to the west coast. It is very clear that the salmon are facing significant challenges. One of the recommendations, not only coming out of the Cohen commission report, but now coming out of the Pacific Salmon Foundation, is to have a very close look at salmon farming on the west coast, understanding that the most recent science on it seems to indicate that in fact fish farms are contributing to wild salmon mortality and declining salmon stocks.

I can assure the member that we are looking at this very closely. I would be quite prepared to enter into further dialogue with the member on this.

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise to debate this very important bill, Bill C-68, which deals with changes to the Fisheries Act. I will point out that in general, the government's legislative agenda is floundering. It has clammed up. Liberals are trolling the bottom. They are trying desperately to get through as much legislation as they can, and they are doing it under repeated time allocation. I looked hard, and there are no pearls in this one. The government is putting forward these changes to the Fisheries Act in defiance of good sense.

Now, this bill is very important in my riding. Why do I say that? I represent a riding in Alberta, and there are not a lot of people who earn their living by fishing in Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan. However, the framework that existed before 2012 with respect to fisheries protection and navigable waters protection is quite perverse. Members have spoken about this already. It is the idea that it was pretty easy to get almost anything designated as fish habitat. If my kids are out playing in the yard one day, they dig a hole, it rains, and it fills up with water, maybe that is a fish habitat. All of a sudden, that requires all kinds of processes, consultations, and changes. That obviously does not make any sense.

More seriously, there were issues with farmers, people who were building ditches for drainage, very simple normal activities. Things would fill up with water and all of a sudden get designated as fish habitat, which would invoke all kinds of different protections, regulations, and red tape from the federal government.

I do not think it is rocket science or even fish science to say that we should be thinking more rationally and strategically about how we protect our fish stocks. Rather than having this sort of proliferation of designation of fish habitat—and navigable waters was another issue that was drawing in similar kinds of over-regulation—we would try to be strategic about protecting fish stocks. We would think about what those critical points of protection were. We would have strong regulations in those cases, and, at the same time, we would not be protecting things in the wrong way.

On this side of the House, we favour rational, effective, and, as much as possible, surgical regulation; that is, regulation that does the thing it is intended to do, and the repeal of regulation that does not do what it is intended to do, that is not connected to a clear, rational objective. That is why, for instance, when Conservatives were in government, every time we introduced a new regulation, we developed a structure so that there would have to be a corresponding removal of regulation. Any time that ministers wanted to bring in new regulations, they also had to think about removing other regulations. That is a good approach, because sometimes government fails to think about repealing old, irrelevant regulations, trying to tighten up and smarten the rules. Again, it is not about not having those protections in place; it is about ensuring that those protections are rational and effective, and actually associated with the objectives that the regulation is in fact intended to serve.

In 2012, the previous government brought forward changes that shifted the focus from protecting fairly arbitrarily defined fish habitat to actually protecting and preserving our fish stocks. That was a good approach. It was widely supported by civil society. It was not supported by some voices, but, generally speaking, those who saw the practical problems and the practical need for improvement supported our approach. Some parties in this House waved the flag and said that fewer waterways were protected. We were effectively protecting vital waterways and assuring that the farmer's ditch, that hole that my kids dug in the backyard, did not get designated as a waterway. There was an appropriate level of protection for places where fish actually live, and there was no merit in applying those regulations beyond their usefulness.

Unfortunately, the Liberal government has sort of drunk their own bathwater when it comes to these talking points. They have bought into these lines about how they need to go back to the old regulatory system, which piled on unnecessary red tape and made it harder to do any kind of development, but with no discernible objective.

I did want to say if one wants to talk about what actually is harmful to fish and what is harmful to waterways, let us talk about the decision by the former Liberal mayor of Montreal to dump raw sewage into the St. Lawrence Seaway, and the approval he received from the environment minister to do that. Raw sewage and the environment do not go hand in hand. However, the government wants to make it more difficult to do science-based development. It wants to make life harder for the energy sector. It put all kinds of barriers in the way of energy development and pipeline development. It wants to make it harder for municipalities to develop by putting unnecessary regulatory burdens in front of them, unless one is a well-connected, former Liberal MP who is the mayor of Montreal. Then if one wants to dump raw sewage in there, go for it.

How did the fish feel when that happened? Do fish feel? I do not know, but it was not good for their health, is the point.

I know members across the way are excited about this point but they cannot get around it. Our approach was one that actually protected fish habitat, that actually sought to protect fish stocks. It was science-based, it was consistent, and it was safe and effective.

My constituents often ask me about the double standards they see from the government. On the one hand, it talks about the environment. On the other hand, the government's approach to environmental policy is totally disconnected from reality, such as the piling of hurdles on the energy east pipeline. Again, there was Denis Coderre's strong opposition to the energy east pipeline because there might be some spill, allegedly. That was his line associated with that. At the same time, the government was not thinking about the impact on the fish from raw sewage. This is a floundering legislative agenda, indeed. Someone has heard me repeat that joke. However, they are hearing it for the first time. That is good.

There are a few other provisions in this bill that I want to touch on, in the time that I have left. The bill raises transparency concerns and due process concerns. For one thing it allows the minister to withhold critical information from interested proponents. We have heard a lot of discussion from the government about transparency, about sunny ways, and about how sunlight is the best disinfectant. However, we actually see in reality a consistent refusal to apply this lofty talk on transparency in practice. We see that happening and that certainly is disappointing. Again, we see cases of that in this particular piece of legislation.

This bill, as I said, piles on additional unnecessary regulations. It fails the test of being surgical and focused on achieving any clear, discernible result. This bill allows also for the establishment of advisory panels. These have former Liberal politicians and soon to be former Liberal politicians salivating, I am sure, about the opportunities of joining advisory panels for which they will be, no doubt, richly remunerated. However, there is no clarity around the guidance they will be required to give or the limitations on the use of these panels, or the conditions that they will be subject to.

The government, in creating more opportunities for patronage appointments, is not thinking about the fish. It is only thinking about the well-connected Liberal insiders. At the time of clam scam, one would think that it would want to avoid even the appearance of this kind of problem. Alas, it has not.

There are many concerns that we have with the bill: the problems for development, the troubling mechanisms, and other points I have not had time to get to. In any event, I will be opposing the bill.

[Kevin Lamoureux, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons]

Mr. Speaker, I rise to give good news to my friend across the way. He can let his children go out and play in the yard, dig a little hole, and let water fall into it. He does not have to fear that the children are going to be in violation.

There has been a great deal of effort and consultation involving many different stakeholders. The department has done its job in presenting this legislation. In fact, there are more than just the government inside the House who support the legislation. On the other hand, there are the Conservatives, who have clearly demonstrated that the legislation does not matter. If they are against it, they will talk it, and talk it out. Their preference is to never allow it to see the light of day. That is one of the reasons why one ultimately has to bring in time allocation. We would never see the legislation passed if it were up to the Conservative Party.

My question to my colleague is, recognizing how Canadians want us to bring in progressive legislation such as this, why does the Conservative Party continue to be out of touch with what Canadians want to see when it comes to our waterways, our environment, and so on?

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Mr. Speaker, it will not surprise my friend across the way that I quarrel with the premise of the question. Indeed, his late-stage conversion to the merits of time allocation is fishy indeed. He spent 20 years in opposition, provincially and federally, but now that he is in government, he finally has seen the light. He has it. Suddenly he knows that time allocation is a great and necessary tool for overcoming the obstructionism of the opposition.

[Some hon. members]

Hear, hear!

[Garnett Genuis, Conservative, Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan, AB]

Members are clapping, and soon after 2019, they will lose that insight I am sure. I am sure a few months after 2019, the member for Winnipeg North will realize that maybe it was not such a good idea after all. There will not be as much enthusiasm from the member for Winnipeg North from his post in the private sector.

I may have gilded the lily a little with the example of my children in the backyard. I acknowledge that, and did acknowledge that in my remarks. It is not a lily that requires much gilding, to be frank though. There are many examples that my colleagues have brought up. There are cases where ditches have been dug by farmers, and they been designated as a waterway and fish habitat all of a sudden.

The member also pointed out that the government is not the only party that supports the bill. Congratulations; you have the even further left parties in the House that support your radical agenda to make development as difficult as possible. If we are the only party standing for common sense in the next election, I am very proud of the opportunity that will give us.

[The Assistant Deputy Speaker, Liberal, Anthony Rota]

I want to remind hon. members that when they come back tomorrow and they are talking, they will want to speak through the Chair. I am sure the hon. member did not mean my, whatever it was he was talking about.

A motion to adjourn the House under Standing Order 38 deemed to have been moved.