Mr. Speaker, today I rise in the House to ask a question I asked in this House just last week about the Impact Assessment Act and the Supreme Court's ruling that overturned the federal government's move on the Impact Assessment Act, Bill C-69. The government moved ahead despite everybody it could possibly consult with, including opposition parties, every provincial legislature, 100 first nation bands across Canada and many other parties, saying the Impact Assessment Act as written was unconstitutional and treaded on their rights. So many rights are expressed in legislation, yet this was ignored for so long.
The Government of Alberta was backed by nine provincial governments at various points in time throughout the process. It took four years because the reference case took two years to go through the appeal court system and then almost another two years to get to the Supreme Court of Canada. It was four years of lost economic activity and, effectively, constitutional strife in Canada. That is a long time.
How many projects were held up in Canada in that time? It was hundreds of billions of dollars in projects. Right now, 42 projects have not received an environmental assessment. About half of them are under the old regime, the one before the Impact Assessment Act, called the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act, which was passed by the previous government and effectively allowed a whole bunch of environmental assessments to be done.
What amazed me was the response I got from the parliamentary secretary for housing when I asked a question about the federal government's involvement in this. He said at that point in time that the previous government's legislation got nothing done and had a gutted process. We cannot have it both ways. I cannot say how many times I hear from the other side of the House that they have their cake and eat it too and that the old legislation they tried to fix did not get anything done and yet was gutless. We cannot have both those things at the same time, but that is the continued narrative I hear on this all the time. It bewilders me to some degree, because it contradicts itself in so many ways, but he said that.
This was supposed to deal with the fact that the Impact Assessment Act had to go back and get corrected as quickly as possible. Getting it corrected as quickly as possible would bring forward economic activity in Canada so we can get something done in this country again, including in all the provinces across Canada. This has to happen.
I think about all the economic activity that has been held up because of the uncertainty created by the Impact Assessment Act and how it has affected so many project proponents across Canada. It is an embarrassment. It is an international embarrassment too that so much capital, including Canadian investments, is being deployed elsewhere and not here in Canada. That includes the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. This is a travesty. We need to get over it as quickly as possible.
How do we do that? We could put forward legislation that is constitutional very quickly; stop sitting on our hands; take some lessons from some environmental advocates, environmental experts and constitutional experts; and listen to what they are saying: Stay in our lane, abide by our jurisdiction and get some proper legislation we can abide by in this country.