Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise to speak at second reading to Bill C-5, but I wish I never had to speak to the bill, because I wish I had never had to read the bill. Reading it and understanding it has been one of the most crushingly depressing experiences I have had since I was first elected to this place in 2011.
The hon. member for Edmonton Strathcona quoted noted journalist Althia Raj saying this is the kind of bill Stephen Harper would have liked to bring forward, but he would not have had the nerve.
This is an abomination, and it is not necessary in the quest for building a strong Canadian economy. It does not remove the interprovincial barriers to the extent they need to be removed, because that is not within the federal government's purview to do with the stroke of a pen. However, it says it is going to. It is going to remove some of the barriers the federal government can.
The next part of the bill, part 2, which is rather a separate bill and should have been dealt with separately, is an entirely different construct and unlike anything I have ever seen before in legislation.
Let us try to walk through this calmly and dispassionately and urge the government to rethink the way this bill is being run through Parliament within four days. This is not defensible. The bill requires amendments; it requires study. I have heard many Liberal members in this place, including the government House leader, stand up and say they want it studied. Well, if they want it studied, they have to schedule hearings. They cannot take place in less than 24 hours and be called hearings that heard from witnesses and experts. The programming motion is as offensive as the bill itself, and that is actually saying quite a lot about it.
I have been struggling with trying to decide which adage this bill really proves, “Haste makes waste” or “The road to hell is paved with good intentions”, because both are undoubtedly true.
What we have here is an astounding bill that gives cabinet and the Prime Minister, and only them, the power to make decisions alone in the cabinet room, and implement their own ideas, with no mandatory criteria.
Let us look at part 1, which is the part that is getting the least attention. When I read it, I thought, “Well, labour mobility is a good thing.” I have been railing for years about the need to get rid of interprovincial trade barriers, particularly for creating an east-west, north-south electricity grid. That is something we desperately need in the quest for climate action.
There are things we need to do across this country to make us a truly modern, industrialized nation. Living up to the calls for justice for the missing and murdered indigenous women and girls commission inquiry, I would say we must have safe, reliable and affordable public transportation across this country. We have lost bus service, and Via Rail is inconsistent. That is a true nation-building project; it was actually Pierre Berton's national dream kind of nation-building project. However, we do not need to start out by saying in part 1 that we know what we are doing and that we are in such a hurry that we run the risk of reducing standards that protect health and the environment.
I was called up short when I got an email from the Canadian Cancer Society, because my initial response to reading part 1 of the bill was that I did not have to worry about it; labour mobility is a good thing and harmonizing standards is a good thing. It was not until I read the Canadian Cancer Society's memo that I remembered how getting rid of regulations in the U.K. under Margaret Thatcher led to mad cow disease, because all the red tape, all the things that seemed meaningless, actually protect health and the environment. Getting rid of regulations just to get rid of them is not very smart, as the U.K. realized during the mad cow horrors.
What we have in part 1 that is identified by the Canadian Cancer Society is the idea of comparable standards, which are not defined, and saying that if there are standards that are exercised at a provincial or territorial level, they could be adopted for goods that are in commerce even if they are weaker than the federal standard. The Canadian Cancer Society asks us as parliamentarians to exercise some caution and to amend the bill so there would be a carve-out for health and environmental standards so they would not be weakened.
Businesses looking for profits are, of course, looking for a weaker standard if it helps them make more money. That is the way business works. It is just the reality. We do not want to put in place and incentivize a race to the bottom. Part 1 was getting a lot less attention, so I wanted to stress the Canadian Cancer Society's concerns.
Again, part 1 and part 2 should have been split. They do not have enough in common to be treated as a single bill. I appreciate the Bloc Québécois's efforts to get these two quite separate bills decoupled, but that will not happen, as we will be rushed to finish everything within four days.
Just moments ago, it was referenced that we will have a committee study starting tomorrow afternoon for a bit and then again on Wednesday. One committee will study the bill, the Standing Committee on Transport, Infrastructure and Communities, which means that the bill, with profound implications for the environment and indigenous rights, will never be studied by the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development, nor by the Standing Committee on Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development or the Standing Committee on Fisheries and Oceans.
What part 2 says is that there would be a decision by cabinet about what project qualifies as being in the national interest. There is a definition of national interest if members want to find it, but it is entirely a tautology. A national interest project means what cabinet has decided is a national interest project.
Members can see what would lead to the decision that it is a national interest project. I am sure unintentionally, but many members in this place have stood up and said not to worry because a project must meet all these factors, so it is certainly going to be a good project. The factors listed in subclause 5(6) are good factors, and if they were requirements before a project was listed in the national interest, I would have an entirely different view of this act. It says in subclause 5(6) that cabinet may consider any factor cabinet thinks is relevant, including the extent to which a project can meet the factors that I guess are here for public relations benefit:
(a) strengthen Canada’s autonomy, resilience and security;
(b) provide economic or other benefits to Canada;
(c) have a high likelihood of successful execution;
(d) advance the interests of Indigenous peoples; and
(e) contribute to clean growth and to meeting Canada’s objectives with respect to climate change.
All of that means exactly nothing, exactly zero, because it is a suggestion that cabinet may consider anything cabinet may want to consider. Cabinet members may want to consider some of these things, but they do not have to, and that is a question of just considering them.
I have never seen anything like this in any legislation, so forgive me, because I would rather analyze than talk about how many pieces of propaganda have been woven into this discussion. However, subclause 6(1) is so remarkable that it needs to be at least referenced quickly. From the moment cabinet decides a project is in the national interest, it says:
Every determination and finding that has to be made and every opinion that has to be formed in order for an authorization to be granted in respect of a national interest project is deemed to be made or formed, as the case may be, in favour of permitting the project to be carried out in whole or in part.
In other words, the instruction to future decision-makers, different ministers, for different pieces of legislation is that before they look at the evidence, they have to remember they are exercising their discretion toward getting a project done, regardless of what they find out when they start studying it. This is the ultimate in leap before we look. As environmental lawyer Anna Johnston from West Coast Environmental Law said, “Bill C-5 tosses aside the notion of informed decision making, the precautionary principle and the imperatives of reconciliation, the climate crisis and democratic decision making.”
When we look at a bill like this, we think that we have a parliamentary process for a reason. We have a debate at second reading, it goes to committee, we hear from witnesses, it gets studied and then we amend it. However, everybody is in a hurry. No jobs are going to be saved, because we moved too fast to notice that what we are passing is an abomination. Yes, it would lead to more court cases and, yes, it would lead to more delays, but if nothing else, it would lead to an excess of power in the hands of cabinet that would never be reversed. In that, it is an abuse of Parliament itself.
