Debates of May 10th, 2021

Economic Relationship between Canada and the United States

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, on that point of order, I think it is important to reflect on the fact that what we are debating right now is to concur in a report from a committee. I am speaking right now as to why I think the Conservatives feel the need to concur in that committee report, so I am actually extremely relevant to the subject, because I am speaking to the concurrence motion, which is before us right now.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

I appreciate the hon. members weighing in on this. Members know that the topics of their discussions at hand need to be relevant to the motion or the question that is before the House. I have been listening to the hon. member for Kingston and the Islands, and I noted that the start of his discussion around the essence of the debate we are having on the concurrence motion was related to today's projected order of business, so I do think it is relevant.

We will let the hon. member carry on.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I do have the recommendations here with me. I would wager a guess that the Conservative members who are participating today do not even know how many recommendations there are in here, let alone what they say.

I will get back to what I was saying. Here is the interesting thing about the scenario we are in right now in concurring in this report. I do not know if the Conservatives just did not plan this out properly in moving concurrence in this report. I think this is extremely germane, especially to those who are watching this and might not quite understand how we got to this point. During our routine proceedings, there is an opportunity for members to move a concurrence in a report. We can do only one of those per sitting, and it will take up to three hours of debate. Quite often, what the Conservatives do, and they have done it a number of times in this session, is move to concur in a report because it burns three hours of the day, usually on stuff they do not want to talk about.

However, I do not know if those who were deciding that filibuster strategy had really thought out exactly what they were doing, because the time allocation motion that came in this morning said the debate on Bill C-19 will adjourn after one more day, so they are not filibustering anything, because they are not preventing that legislation from actually being voted on tomorrow. All they are doing is literally replacing discussion on BIll C-19 with this motion to concur in an issue that I would remind members we spoke about in an emergency debate only two or three days ago.

Yes, it is extremely germane to this discussion. As the Parliamentary Secretary to the President of the Queen's Privy Council indicated earlier, this is just a tactic by the Conservatives, but the irony is that we are still going to be voting on the bill tomorrow. If we do the math and factor in that they will burn through the whole 15 minutes of petitions when we finally get to that part of orders of the day, we will literally talk about Bill C-19 for about 20 minutes, and then we will be forced to vote on it.

[Ed Fast, Conservative, Abbotsford, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I rise on a point of order.

My colleague just raised another point of order about the relevance of this member's speech, and now he has spent the last five minutes talking about procedure rather than the matter at hand, which is a concurrence motion on Line 5, so I would ask you to gently correct him and move him in the right direction, so we can actually have a debate about energy security for Canada.

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

I thank the hon. member for Abbotsford for weighing in on the subject again. As I said earlier, quite often these debates do tip into matters of the process involved, and generally those are accepted as being relevant to the debate at hand. As I listen to the hon. member, I know he is only seven minutes into his remarks for his allowed time, and I am certain that he will, in the time that is at hand, get around to matters specific to the motion.

Honestly, his remarks are relevant to the topic, and if he wants to talk about the process involved here as it relates to the motion, then that is relevant as well.

The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I know they do not want to hear it, because what I am saying is clearly getting under their skin. They do not like the truth, and the truth hurts sometimes.

Conservative members have now been told not once but twice by the Speaker that what I am saying is in order. If they are not going to listen to me, perhaps they will at least respect the Speaker's ruling, which has been given not once but twice.

In any event, I find it perplexing that we are having this discussion instead of talking about Bill C-19. However, I am not surprised that the Conservatives would rather talk about pipelines than about proper measures to bring into place during an election. I mean, that is par for the course, and it is indeed exactly right up their alley.

This committee, as we debated a few nights ago, brought in this issue that centres on the fact that there is such a close and strong relationship between the United States and Canada. We have the largest trading partnership in the world, with billions of dollars moving back and forth. We have infrastructure that moves from one country to the other and back, moving along the supply chain when it comes to end products.

This particular issue, as I mentioned a few nights ago, is so important not just to Canada but indeed to our neighbours to the south, in particular those northern states affected by this issue. I have full confidence, despite the fact the committee made seven recommendations, that most of the committee's recommendations are already being undertaken by the government.

Of course we heard from members like the member for Chilliwack—Hope say they want to know exactly what the government is doing and want it all to be public. As we know, and as I am sure the Conservatives would know from way, way back when they were in government, from time to time we have to allow those processes to take place and recognize that not all these discussions happen in public. Quite often they happen in individual phone calls and behind the scenes. We heard the Minister of Natural Resources say on a number of occasions that he has been engaged with all stakeholders and his counterparts. This issue has been brought up with the President of the United States directly. People are talking about this situation to try to come to some resolution.

I have confidence that a meaningful resolution will come, if out of nothing else than from the fact that there are so many people on both sides of the border who are affected. This is indeed a reciprocal issue that is going to affect a lot of people on both sides of the border.

Yes, Enbridge is being forced to deal with some of the issues pointed out by members in the debate today. It is being forced to deal with some of the issues it has had, and rightly so, especially when it comes to impacts on our environment.

However, I do not believe there will not be a solution that will be in our best interest, especially when it means so much economically speaking and from a stability perspective to make sure that this product continues to move back and forth. I have no doubt that there will be a successful outcome to this. I have no doubt, and I have great faith that when the Minister of Natural Resources says to us that this is a top priority, that he is engaging at every level and making sure these discussions are moving along at every level, that it is actually happening.

If we look at these seven recommendations from the committee, we see that the first one is basically that the Government of Canada encourage Enbridge and the State of Michigan to resolve their dispute. I think it is safe to say just about all of us would agree we want them to resolve their dispute, so I appreciate the committee putting it into a full-fledged recommendation.

The next recommendation is that the Government of Canada continue to engage with the relevant stakeholders on both sides of the border. This is something, as I indicated, that the Minister of Natural Resources said he is doing. He is continuing to have those discussions in order to find a resolution that will be to the benefit of both the State of Michigan and to the ability to continue to deliver this product back and forth to the various locations on both sides of the border.

The recommendations continue to go on basically in the same vein. I am not going to read all seven of them. They are basically in the same vein of continuing those discussions. I find that the recommendations, although they would have set a perfect template for what the Conservatives could have come in here and discussed, have served absolutely no purpose to the Conservatives, because all they have done in here is berate the government for the work they perceive the government has not done. The Conservatives have no way of knowing what has actually been accomplished, other than taking the word of the Minister of Natural Resources, which they apparently refuse to do.

What we do have is Conservatives coming in here and not referencing any of these recommendations, not talking about ways to make this better. We have them coming in here and just going on and on about where they perceive the problems to be but not offering any constructive solutions, not trying to compromise and not coming forward with a substantive plan. Whenever they were asked in the emergency debate a few days ago “What would you do differently? Tell us what your plan would be to resolve this,” the Conservatives did not have an answer. They are not interested in an answer, because it does not serve their political objective.

I hate to say this because I do not think any member in this House would actually not like to see a good resolution come out of this, but quite often, from time to time, I am left wondering if the Conservatives really even want us to resolve this.

It is similar to the vaccine issue. Quite often I sit here and wonder if the Conservatives even really want us to be successful in dealing with this pandemic. Part of me thinks that maybe they do not, because the Conservatives are more interested in the politics that come out of this than in actually taking care of Canadians.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, on a point of order, it is certainly incredibly troubling to hear the member opposite suggest that somehow Conservatives would like Canada to fail in procuring vaccines when that means that somehow he is suggesting that Conservatives would want to see more Canadians die.

That is absolutely absurd reasoning that the member opposite—

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

I am not hearing a point of order in there, but there will be time for questions and comments, and perhaps the hon. member will get an opportunity to pose that comment when the time comes.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, somehow the member across the way is offended by that comment. I clearly said that I do not want to believe it, but I am often left wondering.

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Sure, I did put it out there, because I am often left wondering that. I find it incredibly amazing how the member finds that offensive, but not half the stuff that comes from that side of the House during question period.

The reality here is that I think I have hit a nerve, because I am getting a lot of heckling right now. I have successfully pointed out some of the realities of the situation.

When I stand here and I look back on the way that this day has unfolded, I cannot help but think that Conservatives have absolutely no interest in helping Canadians. There are many scenarios in which this House could go into an election tomorrow. The Conservatives, for example, routinely vote against confidence in this House, whenever a budget bill or something like that comes up. They are always voting against the government. All Conservatives need is for the other two political parties in here, the Bloc and the NDP, to agree with them just one time, and then we would be into an election.

All we are trying to say is that we should have a discussion and talk about Bill C-19, but instead the Conservatives used this tactic today to bring in this concurrence motion to burn time. They all know that is exactly what they did. Conservatives are burning time on this motion so that we do not talk about Bill C-19. Then they are going to say that they had only four hours in total to debate the bill, and so on and so forth, and that the government had all this time.

However, the Conservatives do not even understand the bill, as we saw. That is probably actually why, now that I think about it. I cannot believe I did not think of this earlier. That is probably why they insisted on this concurrence motion. We saw the massive misunderstanding from members like the member for Elgin—Middlesex—London and the member for Lethbridge. We heard what they had to say about this during the 30-minute questions and comments with the minister. They had no idea what Bill C-19 is really about. They missed huge parts of the bill that were in there. They did not even realize they were in there.

As I come a conclusion, it makes so much more sense now as to why Conservatives are insisting on talking about this, why they are insisting on heckling me to try to shut me down from bringing forward the truth to this floor. Nonetheless, Conservatives will do what they do. They do it every single time, and at the end of the day, we will have 19 minutes to discuss Bill C-19 before it is put to a vote in the House.

[Damien Kurek, Conservative, Battle River—Crowfoot, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to simply give the opportunity to the member for Kingston and the Islands to actually talk about the recommendations, which he referenced at length but did not actually talk about.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, the member just said I referenced them at length but did not talk about them.

[Alexis Brunelle-Duceppe, Bloc, Lac-Saint-Jean, QC]

Mr. Speaker, I am once again appalled by what I just heard. Whenever I hear the Liberals, I start feeling sick to my stomach.

Once again, a Liberal member is saying that the Conservatives are filibustering, that it is ridiculous and that they are playing politics.

The member belongs to a party that filibustered at the Standing Committee on Access to Information, Privacy and Ethics and at the Standing Committee on National Defence. His party is also the one that prorogued Parliament for a month and a half. Now he would have me believe that he is not playing politics. I hope my colleagues will forgive me for laughing.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I am sorry. Did I leave out the Bloc? Are they feeling a little disappointed that I did not mention them enough? They are just as complicit in what is going today as the Conservatives.

The member stood on a number of occasions today talking about how the Prime Minister shut down the House. It was for three sitting days, and in addition to that—

[Some hon. members]

Oh, oh!

[The Deputy Speaker, Bruce Stanton]

Order. There are only 15 members in the House, but there is far too much noise.

I will allow the member for Kingston and the Islands to finish his intervention, and then we will move on to the next question.

The hon. member for Kingston and the Islands.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, it was three days. To the member for Abbotsford, it was two days and one day for a throne speech. Before that, throughout the summer we had a special committee, which I had never even heard of happening in Parliament, that met regularly throughout the summer. If I look at the number of questions that have been asked by the opposition, there is no doubt in my mind that it is going to outweigh previous Parliaments based on that alone.

The member for Lac-Saint-Jean keeps going back to shutting down the House. It was for three days

[Richard Cannings, NDP, South Okanagan—West Kootenay, BC]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to ask the member for Kingston and the Islands about Michigan's concern about the environment.

The governor made it an election promise that she was going to shut down Line 5, just like President Biden promised to shut down Keystone XL when he was running for president, and the Liberals and Conservatives seem surprised by this.

I am wondering what the government has been doing to allay those concerns. I am thinking, for instance, that we have a new energy secretary in Washington who is also a former governor of Michigan, someone with very close Canadian ties. I am wondering if the federal government has been speaking directly with the energy secretary and what her thoughts are on this matter.

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, as indicated by the Minister of Natural Resources, he has been engaged in discussions with various stakeholders on both sides of the border and his counterparts on the other side of the border. I do not have the list of everybody who has spoken, so I cannot clearly answer with regard to that one specific person, but I will say to the member's first point, yes, I believe that the governor raised a very good point. When I hear some of the stuff that has been said by the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands and other members of the House, including this NDP member, I see that there are some environmental concerns and I certainly want to see that they are taken care of.

[Greg McLean, Conservative, Calgary Centre, AB]

Mr. Speaker, I have to thank my colleague on the other side of the House for his comments. I am often challenged by which comments are more worthwhile to the House, his or the deputy House leader's, because they both seem to be taking up a lot of oxygen and they are frankly more partisan than they are practical. I would suggest that a little parsimoniousness in their words might get us a little further toward where we are going here.

Let the record show as well that while we are potentially two days away from this line shutting down, the member for Kingston and the Islands is smiling and joking in the House of Commons that we should not be bringing this up. I am not manipulating process here; I am speaking on behalf of an issue that very important to this country. It is going to be felt all the way across this country if this line fails.

I am bringing it up in Parliament today two days before a deadline, and I am sorry that the member on the other side of the House cannot recognize the importance of this to 30,000 Canadian jobs and the lifeline of the energy infrastructure across this country.

Could he please explain why he is minimizing this issue for Canadians?

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I did not say that he should not bring the issue forward. What I said is that he should make sure that members are speaking directly to how we can make a solution out of this and come to some kind of healthy resolution. If the emergency debate last week was foreshadowing for today, it completely demonstrated that the Conservatives have no interest in talking about this issue other than for the purpose of political grandstanding.

I will be the first to agree with the member that I have no problem standing up here, saying what I believe in and putting it forward. However, if he is suggesting that I am as partisan as some of the members I hear on his side of the House, I will let my electorate decide that.

[Larry Bagnell, Liberal, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Economic Development and Official Languages (Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency)]

Mr. Speaker, the member made the good point that we are supposed to be discussing the Canada Elections Act in case there is an election at any time. Does he not think it is ironic that the Conservatives are distracting us from that, as they have voted numerous times in the last few weeks, along with the Bloc, to have an election?

[Mark Gerretsen, Liberal, Kingston and the Islands, ON]

Mr. Speaker, I would agree. I find it absolutely perplexing and hypocritical for the Conservatives to stand here and say how dare we even threaten them with an election. They are the ones who keep voting for it at almost every opportunity they get. Maybe they are doing some political calculations on how the other parties will be voting and are thinking their bet is a safe one, but this is a minority government. All they need is for the NDP and the Bloc to agree with them and we will have an election. All I am saying is for us to be prepared for that by making sure that Bill C-19, which would protect Canadians during an election, is put in place.

[Warren Steinley, Conservative, Regina—Lewvan, SK]

Mr. Speaker, I will agree with one thing the member for Kingston and the Islands said: He is afraid that he has disappointed us. I am sure he has disappointed more than us in his life, because when it comes to political grandstanding, no one in the House does it better. He did not talk about the concurrence motion. He wants to talk about Bill C-19 because the Liberals want to have an election during a pandemic because they think they can get a majority. That is the only thing the Liberals care about. They are great at campaigning, but they are terrible at government because they are out of touch with the people of Canada.

We have brought forward a topic that affects hundreds of thousands of people's jobs and the economy of Canada, and for him to push it off to the side of the desk by saying that it is all political grandstanding is disrespectful to people across the country. He should have stood and said he listened to the Minister of Natural Resources in question period. The fact is, they think they can jump in at the last second and save this pipeline—