Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to be rejoining the debate on Bill C-69. I have a tough job. I am following the member for Lakeland, who has probably contributed more in this House, in the last two and a half to almost three years, to defending Alberta and Canada's energy industry than any other member of the House. In fact, she has a very long history of defending Canada's energy sector and Alberta's energy workers in her private sector experience before.
She provided us with an overview of the damage that Bill C-69 would do to Canada's economic sector related to the energy industry, and the depth of how much damage would be caused to the energy workers in Alberta, Saskatchewan, and British Columbia.
I cannot match those numbers, but I have seven points I want to go through with respect to Bill C-69, and the different parts of the bill that I think will be very damaging to investments and the future jobs in the energy sector, and to Canada's GDP growth and how much it will be reduced by.
One of the things we often hear about in the House is how strong Canada's growth is. It is often said that we are leading the G7. In fact, that is not even true. We are not leading the G7. The projections by the OECD, and in the PBO's own economic update, has us in the middle, at number four, especially for 2018, with a 1.9% growth. We are actually behind the United States, and we know why. It is because it does not have a carbon tax, which will damage Canada's economy with up to 0.4% less GDP growth.
When I was at the finance committee and I asked the parliamentary budget office officials if ever they had seen a government policy that was intentionally damaging to Canada's economy the way the carbon tax is going to be, they had no answer for me. They could not come up with a response to it because there simply is not one. It is a damaging policy that is being introduced and forced down the throats of provinces that do not want it, including the electorate of Ontario, which last week rejected the damaging policies of the federal Liberal government.
We also know that the natural resource sector in 2016 accounted for 16% of Canada's economic activity. Therefore, 16% of Canada's economic engine is related to the natural resources, and 38% of non-residential capital investment is related to this one sector.
We also know, because the member for Lakeland did a good job of itemizing it, how much foreign investment has fled the country. Again, we know why. It is because we are not as competitive with our main trading partner, the United States, as we used to be. It has introduced drastic tax changes and reforms to its system that make its companies much more competitive. I cannot tell members how many of my constituents, friends, and supporters have moved down to Texas, which I often call “Alberta south”, to work in its energy sector. We know that next year the state of Texas will become the number one producer of oil in the world. It is going to exceed even large producers, such as Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, and Venezuela. It will be producing more oil than any one of them. This is just one state in the United States of America.
We also know that Texas, for instance, does not have a personal income tax system. It has a sales tax instead. However, the offering it provides to workers and to companies is that it will get out of the way. It provides a simple to understand regulatory system that typically does not change from government to government. It provides stability, whereas the current Liberal government is providing more instability.
These are the seven points that I want to raise, and they are in no particular order: moving away from science-based decision-making; the timelines for a final decision will be changed; there are self-processes that will be stopping the clock; we will have open questions about what constitutes a major or minor project; the concentration of power in this legislation; the restoring of the public trust concept, which is highly politically charged; and finally, a question that I asked previously to one of the parliamentary secretaries with respect who would have standing to appear before the renamed NEB regulator to have their voices and their issues heard. Those are the seven points I want to raise in my intervention tonight on this issue.
This legislation has been referred to in the National Post, and this is how it was described. It said, “This new process repeats the mistake in believing that those groups dedicated to the destruction of our oil industry can be reasoned with”.
I, like many other Albertans, did not work directly in the energy industry but was related to it in ways. I worked in human resources. I was a registrar for a profession, and many members worked for organizations that participated in providing HR advice, recruitment, benefits, pension plans. Therefore, it was not directly related to it, but they worked in companies but also provided ancillary services to them. They believed that there is simply no way to satisfy those who are ardently opposed to large-scale industrial energy development of any kind. We can never create a system that will satisfy any of them. No matter how complex the labyrinth becomes, it will never satisfy those who are opposed to development, period.
Social licence does not exist. There is no way to reach the end point where there is broad consensus. In fact, one of the reasons the carbon tax was introduced in Alberta was so that we could get a pipeline built of some sort. Since then we have lost northern gateway. Since then we have lost energy east. Since then LNG projects have been cancelled all over British Columbia. Oftentimes this would have been an outlet for a lot of the natural gas production in Alberta and in British Columbia to world markets. We often do not talk about those, but they are just as important as oil pipelines.
Now Trans Mountain finds itself in the hands of the Liberal government. The Liberals truly have the ability to follow through on the dream of the Prime Minister's father, and I think of many supporters of the Liberal Party today, to phase out the oil sands, to phase out Alberta's energy industry. Twice that has been said by the Prime Minister. The first time he apologized and we all believed that he had misspoken, but the second time he said it at the National Assembly in Paris, France.
Many Albertans, even those who are not directly in the energy industry simply do not believe the Liberal government when it says it will get this pipeline built, because there is no plan going forward. Liberals have not itemized how they are going to get it done. They have simply talked about a very specific purchase agreement that they have successfully negotiated with Kinder Morgan, because it is looking to flee. It is fleeing because of things like Bill C-69, which add more complexity and do not make it simpler to go from a project application to a project completion.
I do not mean the application process being finished. I mean construction actually being completed on the ground. That should be the measure of success and the very minimum expected by the House. If we are going to spend $4.5 billion of taxpayer funds, a contract should be provided to the House so that we can judge the quality of it, who is getting and receiving payment, but also a plan attached to it that has an itemized detailed timeline of when construction will begin, when construction will be finished on particular components of it, and when it will be operating. Again, something we will not see anytime soon, at least not in my mind.
In terms of the moving away from science-based decision-making in this piece of legislation, the Liberals are adding in a lot more qualitative factors over quantitative factors. It has been said by the GMP FirstEnergy Research team:
The qualitative factors look to be nearly impossible to measure or assess. Additionally, certain quantitative measures such as gender-based analysis may be almost impossible to implement in practice.
This has a huge implication for a company with a large-scale industrial project when it is preparing to apply at the beginning. Just as with any application there will be a bunch of boxes to fill in and information to provide. If companies do not know how to meet the test, if the multiple choice question does not have any multiple choices to pick, how are they supposed to satisfy the government on what it is trying to get? This is where the complexity increases. This is where a lot of energy companies will struggle to satisfy the government's want for more information.
Second, on the timelines for a final decision a lot has been said in the House by members that in fact the supposed timelines provided for Bill C-69 are not true timelines. What will happen instead is that there are ample opportunities for it to be blocked and ample opportunities for it to be deviated.
Third, the sub-processes are stopping the clock. Again, GMP FirstEnergy noted that included allowing for additional studies and submissions by interested parties and “other delaying tactics such as the Governor in Council having an unlimited ability to extend a pending decision by the minister for as long as desired and suspending the time limit under which the notice of the commencement of assessment begins.” These are issues itemized by researchers who work for energy companies, who advise energy companies on how to comply with regulatory complexity, which is increasing under Bill C-69.
If the goal was never to have another major industrial project be built in Canada, then the Liberal government has achieved its goal, but I just do not think that was the goal.
We have the CEO of Suncor Energy who has said that no new major industrial projects will come forward. We have the CEO of Sierra Energy, a smaller player in the field, but still a very important one, saying that under this legislation, no new large-scale industrial projects will be proposed to the regulator. I can understand why. It will become way more complex to get anything done.
I mentioned the problem identifying what is a major or a minor project. That is not clarified in this piece of legislation. It would still be difficult to determine that, and again, researchers said that this was a problem.
There would be an immense concentration of power, which many members have issues with, especially on the Conservative side. We have itemized our concern that the minister is getting too involved in the decision-making around projects. There are paths projects could be redirected to that would add to the complexity and add to the burden on the company to try to prove things with information and criteria that might be difficult to collect.
This would not help energy workers in any way. This would not help us get to the “yes” side. This would not help us get to a project being completed and Canada yielding additional prosperity with wealth generated.
At the end of the day, I am convinced that the government wants more revenue. The government wants people to generate income. It wants projects to be undertaken and built. It wants to see that to have an opportunity to levy income tax and sales tax. That cannot be done without having wealth generated.
If the CEO of Suncor Energy is saying that no new major industrial project is going to go ahead, we have serious issues.
The concept of restoring public trust is highly politically charged. It is a manufactured narrative that before there was no trust, but now there is trust. That is interesting. Perhaps that should be told directly to those who are protesting the Trans Mountain pipeline. Maybe that should have been told to those protesting the energy east pipeline, when it was still on the table before the Liberal government killed it off by introducing new regulatory rules.
In its news release at the time, Trans Canada said that it was the decision to introduce new regulatory rules that led to its cancellation. This false concept about restoring the public trust is not helpful in any way. It somehow speaks again to this idea of social licence, which again does not exist. It has been proven over the past few years that nothing will satisfy those who are opposed to energy development of any sort.
Finally, who can be involved in NEB hearings? That was a question I asked before. Subclause 183(3) would eliminate the NEB standing test, which is very important to narrow the scope of the determination of who could appear before the NEB to make the case that they are impacted, beneficially or not, and could make the case that the project should be modified in a certain way to meet their personal or local community needs. Now there would be the opportunity for international groups to appear before the regulator and make a case that they would be somehow impacted directly.
If communities are the ones that can say yes, then it can only be the local community directly related to the project that should have a role in saying how it would be impacted. It should be individuals in those communities who should have the greatest role. It should not be spokespeople who are self-appointed saying that they speak on behalf of a certain group. It should be people locally who can go before the NEB to make their case, as they were able to do before. Now there would be the potential situation where foreigners or people from different parts of Canada, totally unrelated to the project, would make submissions and appearances, slowing down the process and adding more complexity and further delays to the regulatory process to try to meet their demands and their goals.
There are some in the legal community who have offered their opinions, such as Jean Piette, an environmental lawyer at Norton Rose Fulbright, in The Lawyer's Daily, on February 9, 2018. This was very early on, before some of the amendments were made. He said, “I think there are going to be delays inherent to this new process which are going to be of concern to proponents.”
Martin Ignasiak, national co-chair of Osler's regulatory, environmental, Aboriginal and land group, again in The Lawyer's Daily, on February 9, 2018, said, “there is nothing in these legislative proposals that suggests future assessments...will be in any way streamlined, more efficient, or more effective.” In fact, they will not be.
We know that to be true. We know that to be a fact, having seen the final bill that was jammed through the natural resources committee without even a single amendment from the Conservative side accepted as reasonable being added to the docket.
I often hear members of the government caucus say that the committee worked collaboratively. “Collaboratively” gives the false impression that somehow it was a multi-party process, where amendments from each side were considered and included in the final version of the bill that was reported back to the House of Commons. In fact, we know that not to be true. Not a single Conservative amendment was approved on this particular piece of legislation, and often on other pieces of legislation. I hope this will not be a trend that will continue from now until election time, but it speaks to the type of work that is being done on committees. There is a lot of talk and a lot of rhetoric, but the reality is that very few, if any, Conservative amendments are given their full due so that we can consider them in amending government legislation. It does happen, but it is a rare occurrence.
I know I do this quite often, but I want to end on a couple of points, because I know certain points are made by government caucus members about the record of the previous government and how many pipelines were approved and the concept of the economy and the environment going hand in hand. The Yiddish proverb I would like to use on this one is “One cross word brings on a quarrel.” I want to start a quarrel, not directly, but maybe verbally in the House. My quarrel is that we talk about the environment and the economy going hand in hand, but too often, the rhetoric I hear is as if one unit of the economy has to be lost for a unit of the environment to be gained. That is not the case. Why is it that every time the Liberals talk about the environment and the economy going hand in hand, what they mean is that taxpayers pay more and more every single time? They pay more in carbon taxes and more in CPP premiums and payroll taxes and a higher tax on the goods they purchase. On and on it goes. Every single time, small businesses are paying more because of tax changes the Liberals are introducing, despite lowering the small business tax after they rediscovered their promise. It goes on an on.
The second point I want to make is on the record of the previous government. There were countless pipelines, both oil and gas, that were approved: the Melita to Cromer oil pipeline capacity expansion, the TMX-Anchor Loop oil pipeline, the Cochin oil pipeline, the Keystone oil pipeline, the Alberta Clipper oil pipeline expansion—Line 67, the Bakken oil pipeline, the Line 9B oil pipeline to Edmonton, the Hardisty oil pipeline, the Deep Panuke offshore natural gas pipeline, and the South Peace pipeline, and it goes on and on.
There was an immense record of success in the previous system that existed to approve large-scale projects. These pipelines I mentioned are operational today. We know that the government has overseen the cancellation of the most kilometres of pipeline of any government in recent memory. Thousands of kilometres of pipeline have been cancelled or not approved under its watch. I do not see very many new projects going ahead, aside from Trans Mountain, and being put before the regulator for consideration, that would have a meaningful impact on either the differential or on bringing our natural gas to new markets and ensuring that they reach different parts of the United States and international markets.
This is my concern. The rhetoric does not match the reality. The president and CEO of Suncor and other major energy companies, such as Sierra Energy, are right. There will be no new major industrial energy projects proposed under Bill C-69. It is a flawed piece of legislation. It does not address the underlying need to ensure that the rule of law is respected in Canada. That is the fault and defect in the current Liberal government. It is refusing to apply the Constitution. It is refusing to apply the rule of law and to ensure that the permit that was provided in the case of Trans Mountain is actually followed through on. A permit from a regulator is not worth the paper it is written on if it is not backed up by the rule of law, with the courts ensuring that those who continue to obstruct a project illegally face the judicial system. That is the way it should be done. It should also have clear support from the government that does not involve nationalizing a pipeline in the name of trying, in vain, to get it built, when in fact, it is simply bringing it under the control of the government so it can set the timelines on what happens in the future.
Albertans do not trust the government. Alberta energy workers do not trust it controlling the Trans Mountain pipeline, and because of that, I will be voting against the bill.
