Mr. Speaker, Bill C-5 proves one thing for certain: The Liberals broke the system, and Canadians pay the price. An unprecedented $5 trillion of Canadian capital went south and into other countries, and they killed $670 billion in major natural resource projects that could have been built by Canadians with Canadian aluminum and steel for Canada's economic strength, self-reliance, security and unity. In five years alone, 16 major projects were sidelined because of them. It cost Canadians over $176 billion in lost nuclear, critical mineral mines, LNG terminals, pipelines, indigenous-led projects and energy corridors delayed or derailed by lawsuits, bureaucracy, delay and Liberal policies.
Imagine how powerful and self-reliant Canada would be today. Instead, Canada ranks last in the G7 for development, and the Liberals now scramble to patch what they themselves destroyed. Bill C-5 would not fix the fundamentals. It admits failure, with hundreds of thousands of Canadian job losses and more to come, unaffordable power and fuel, and skyrocketing costs of essentials. What the Liberals have to do is what the Conservatives said all along. They should scrap Bill C-69, Bill C-48, the federal industrial carbon tax, the Canadian oil and gas cap and all their other antidevelopment policies and laws.
Proponents today still face unclear rules, no concrete timelines, interference and limited transparency. As the transport minister said herself in committee, “we have come to a place in Canada where we have such a thicket of processes, rules and regulations...that we are unable to build with the alacrity that this moment in time requires.” It is not during just this current moment that major projects cannot get built in Canada with brisk and cheerful readiness. That has been the worsening reality of the last decade of Liberal antidevelopment laws, policies and messages. That dense, cumbersome thicket was created by the very same government that claims to be new while half the ministers are the old ones.
Conservatives offer real solutions: to cut red tape, gatekeepers and taxes; to create clear rules; to attract private investment; and to fast-track major projects for the benefit of all Canadians. The place the Liberals should start is with all the projects stuck in the federal queue right now, such as the Ksi Lisims LNG project, LNG Canada phase two and Bruce Power upgrades, and they should be looking at the dedicated west coast export pipeline to serve Asian energy demand that they killed 10 years ago and indigenous-backed roads to unlock the Ring of Fire. They are in the national interest, and they are waiting for a green light. They should be on the national interest list and fast-tracked yesterday.
Nevertheless, Conservatives worked in good faith with other opposition parties and with the Liberals to help improve Bill C-5, and here I want to thank the Conservative team for all its efforts. It will be up to the Liberals to deliver on their rhetoric and to keep up all their big, but vague, promises to Canadians. It will ultimately be up to Canadians to determine whether they do, and Conservatives will hold them accountable in the meantime.
Even now, Bill C-5 sets up a politically driven and determined process. Ministers will decide who goes ahead and who waits. They can even one day decide a project that they said was in the national interest earlier is no longer and remove it from the list or whatever ad hoc review a responsible minister determines. This is a problem I tried to fix: inherent uncertainty, huge powers behind closed doors and not a permanent fix or way to regulate and review projects in the sector most important to Canada's economy, imperative to help turn poverty into prosperity and to help lower emissions globally.
Bill C-5 blurs the lines, just as Bill C-69 did. What is worse is that the Liberals know it. At committee, the Canada-U.S. trade minister admitted, quote, whoever puts forward these projects, be they public, private, indigenous, provincial or municipal, does not have to go through an evaluation and approvals process that could take five to six years. He admits the Liberal system takes years and delays building. It is not clear whether projects that are actually in provincial or municipal jurisdiction may end up in the Bill C-5 queue for a federal review, which would be a similar overreach problem to that in Bill C-69. The mix of public and private infrastructure should cause taxpayers to take notice too, but again the obvious first step should be to fix that whole evaluations and approvals process the minister himself says is too long.
Proponents and the government itself are trapped by the red tape they imposed. Still, Bill C-5 does not fix it for everyone; it will fast-track a chosen few. At first, it did not even define “national interest”, which left every decision to the whims of cabinet and a lack of clarity for everyone involved, but Conservatives fought to require the government to define national interest with clear, specific criteria. We succeeded in adding that necessary clarity and structure to a process that started with none.
Conservatives also successfully incorporated the requirement of a public list of national interest projects, with timelines, estimated costs and rationale; application of the Conflict of Interest Act to officials and proponents to prevent abuse and prevent politically connected insiders from pursuing personal profit over the public interest behind closed doors; mandatory national security reviews for hostile regimes and state-owned investments into major national interest projects to combat foreign interference and economic imperialism from adversaries and to protect Canadian sovereignty and security; a requirement for the government to fully deliver on its mandatory duty to consult and a clear map for indigenous consultation, with public reporting to build trust, earn confidence and respect indigenous rights and title so that major projects can get to yes in a good way, with minimization of predictable court challenges and delays; and annual independent reviews of project progress so all Canadians can measure the Liberals by their actions, not just their words, and hold them accountable.
These amendments matter. They bring transparency, accountability, more certainty, more clarity and integrity to a bill that originally had none.
However, even with these improvements, major concerns remain. Bill C-5 would still allow ministers the power to remove a project from the national interest list at any time, without notice, reason or recourse. I proposed to remove the power to take projects off the list once they make the cut, because that uncertainty may continue to push investors and builders to other countries with clearer rules and more predictability, just as the Liberals have done to Canada for the past decade.
Since delay is death to major projects, Conservatives also aimed to give concrete timelines that do not actually exist in Bill C-5, despite all the Liberals' claims about a two-year process. I proposed a one-year deadline to issue permits once a project is designated; a 90-day limit for the Governor in Council, the cabinet, to make final decisions; and a requirement to prioritize private or public-private funding to protect taxpayers, to prioritize private funding. Canada should be a place where the private sector can take big risks and build big things on its time and on its dime, not where taxpayers have to be on the hook to get anything done.
The Liberals rejected those amendments.
Then I brought forward an amendment to apply the Conflict of Interest Act to enforce clearer safeguards to prevent corruption and block Liberals from stacking the deck in favour of their friends. This should not be necessary, of course, but we have a Prime Minister who hides his conflicts and where he pays his taxes, and who ran to make the company Brookfield invested in all the kinds of projects that Bill C-5 would fast-track, although under the Prime Minister, it mostly invested in the U.S. and abroad. This caused a flurry and a huddle among Liberal MPs, a couple of odd questions, and then the Liberals voted against it. Thanks to Conservative pressure and support from another opposition party, we forced the government to follow its own laws designed to prevent corruption and to put the public interest ahead of partisanship.
Conservatives also got limits put on cabinet to prevent it from exempting 15 foundational laws that no government should ever sidestep. All Canadians can be forgiven for wondering why the Liberals would have presented such a potentially significant law free from all of those laws in the first place. Conservatives pushed crucial amendments to ensure provincial consultation and to protect provincial jurisdiction and provincial decision-making power, because what the Liberals must show is that they can ensure big projects in federal jurisdiction can be built for Canada's economic strength, security and national unity, not meddle in others. They have to find a will, a spine, a set that they have failed to show in the past decade in order to enforce their own jurisdiction, to treat the national interest approvals according to the general advantage of Canada and to uphold legal and jurisdictional certainty so that proponents can build their projects when approvals face challenges and obstruction. Otherwise, this will all be big talk and a lot of delays without fixing the real problems, which are the antidevelopment laws and policies the Liberals themselves decided they needed this queue-jumping Bill C-5 to work around.
Conservatives' work continues today, with subamendments to clarify and fix flaws. We proposed a parliamentary committee with a nongovernment Chair. No government should judge its own actions. Democratic accountability anchors this principle, so the subamendment strengthens review with independent, balanced representation across parties. Canadians expect transparency, not spectacle. They expect real checks, not blanket approval.
Canada holds vast potential. Natural resources, energy and infrastructure sustain millions of jobs, fund public services, build communities and bolster global trade. Any bill for national development must reflect this reality and champion, not hinder, the sectors that drive prosperity. Canadians need an approach that does not curb ambition, repel investment or deny opportunity. Canada cannot tolerate a framework that casts resource development as a threat rather than a strength. Canada demands confidence, not caution, and momentum, not paralysis.
Conservatives champion responsible resource development, independent oversight and a united Canada, and our amendments to Bill C-5 uphold those values. Conservatives believe in strong paycheques and unity through opportunity, not division and double standards through federal overreach. We believe in reconciliaction through—
