Madam Speaker, I am grateful for the debate on my PMB, Bill C-221, the environmental restoration incentive act, which is one part of what must be a multipronged approach to a current and future risk that needs resolution.
There is rarely a single perfect public policy remedy to a complex real-world challenge. Exponentially increasing orphaned and abandoned wells are mainly a result of major bankruptcies and a widespread economic collapse, caused in part by Canada's own anti-energy federal government and the 2019 Redwater decision that prevents struggling small oil and gas developers from getting private financing when nearing bankruptcy with outstanding remediation liabilities. The federal government can take real action while provinces do their part.
My bill exclusively focuses on the most financially challenged small and medium-sized oil and gas businesses and fairly proposes to include this tool that is currently available to other sectors, such as exploration development in mining, fabrication of metals and other technologies such as wind turbines, geothermal energy and fuel cells. Before 2017, flow-through shares could be used by oil and gas producers for drilling and exploration too. It makes sense to extend it to the smallest, most at-risk energy businesses in Canada, which cannot secure private sector financing due to their precarious economic positions and liabilities, specifically to encourage the remediation and reclamation efforts that they were doing under normal financial circumstances.
It is a no-brainer. Why should flow-through share provisions be limited to the extraction and production fees of resource development and not be available as an environmental remediation tool? South Okanagan—West Kootenay's NDP MP said he accepts the use of flow-through shares for mining extraction. I wonder why we cannot all agree that they should be used to stimulate private sector financing for restoration as well.
What is very odd is that the MPs who like flow-through shares for production but not remediation also offered support for a colleague's intended bill for qualifying environmental trusts. I supported it also, but the fact is that it would have immediately helped only the largest producers with the advantage of cash on hand. My Bill C-221 helps the smallest businesses on the edge of bankruptcy, businesses that cannot get financing and cannot or will not access the federal government's predatory payday style LEEFF loans or the BDC's co-lending and mid-market programs.
Some colleagues say my bill is a subsidy. I have explained extensively why it is not and I will not revisit that question, but I must emphasize that my intent is to protect taxpayers in the long run and limit public liability. My bill is a discount for Canadian taxpayers.
Canada’s oil and gas sector contributed $493 billion in revenues to governments in Canada between 2000 and 2018. That is $26 billion per year. The PBO says my bill will cost $264 million in total, ending in 2026. It could potentially cost taxpayers everywhere $70 billion for all 130,000 active and inactive wells in Canada today.
Davenport’s Liberal MP talked about the need to support measures that help companies avoid bankruptcy and support our environmental targets. Bill C-221 does exactly those things, but deliberately limits the use of public funds by enabling the lion’s share of financing, specifically for remediation and reclamation, to come from the private sector.
Bloc MPs urged the polluter pay principle. Yes, the Conservatives enshrined it in law, but the fact is that voting against my bill goes against that principle, ignores the realities of small and medium-sized oil and gas businesses and workers on the edge of total devastation, and leaves either a lack of remediation or only taxpayers liable.
My bill is real action, not just rhetoric, on the polluter pay principle to help the most vulnerable energy businesses—