Madam Speaker, it is a real honour to rise today for the first time in the calendar year 2026 to speak on behalf of the constituents of West Vancouver—Sunshine Coast—Sea to Sky Country.
I wish all members of the House a very happy new year. I am looking forward to working in a spirit of collaboration as we get this year under way.
I very much hope things will be different this year. Certainly things started off the right way. I heard the shift in tone from the Leader of the Opposition in response to the seminal speech from our Prime Minister at Davos. I heard the very gracious words that he shared and the commitments to pass some very important pieces of legislation for Canadians.
When I heard that the Conservatives wanted to speak on a sovereignty act today, I was very excited to see if we could have a real debate about some of the major issues we have to grapple with to deal with the rupture in the global order and, frankly, the threat we have coming from south of the border, including among other things how that changes how we deal with our national security when we may not be able to rely on the United States.
How can we unite our nation? How can we work with provinces? How can we work better with first nations in a spirit of partnership? How can we build our ports to access new markets? How can we buy more Canadian products? How can we have a clear-eyed plan to drive prosperity not only today but also deep into the future?
However, much to my disappointment, when I actually read what was in the so-called sovereignty act, I saw that rather than dealing with these very important issues, we are getting a rehash of the same tired Conservative policy playbook that encompasses no more than a wish list of the oil and gas industry to gut Canada's environmental protections. Rather than making Canada more sovereign and looking into the future, what the Conservatives are proposing would actually further shackle us to the United States and a world that no longer exists. Rather than working to unite the nation, what has been proposed is to bully and steamroll all who disagree with them. We know that this plan has failed before and would fail again, but now is not the time to be going down that same road and playing these fruitless games.
I think it would be helpful to go through a number of points within the proposed sovereignty act to really point out what it means.
Among other things, the act proposes repealing the Impact Assessment Act, which, for those who do not know, is a piece of environmental assessment legislation that rationalizes the work that Canada needs to do to ensure that projects are going to mitigate the environmental impacts they have. It allows for better first nations consultation and in fact imposes strict timelines on government reviews of those projects. Frankly, since this legislation was brought in, the reviews of those projects have improved not only in quantity but also in efficiency. This is because what it replaced was the CEAA 2012 legislation, which was so poorly written that projects, after getting approved, would just find their way into the courts and be hung up for years and years.
When the Conservatives call the bill the “no more pipelines act”, I think it is really telling. They do not want to talk about what would replace it. If we do not have any environmental assessment legislation, how would we even look at any different projects? Would everything just get approved no matter what? Notably they do not talk about any of the other major projects we have that could really grow our prosperity. There is no talk of things like a national electricity grid and what that could do to open up prosperity in many parts of the country, reduce electricity costs and open up new sectors.
The next act the Conservatives propose repealing is the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act. This piece of legislation, which was enacted in 2018, just formalizes what has been a half-century-long agreement of Canadian government after Canadian government. It is in place to do something very important; it is about making sure we are protecting some of the most dangerous waters in our entire country. When the Conservatives talk about why it needs to be repealed, they always bring up the northern gateway project, as if the act were the piece of legislation that caused that project not to proceed. In fact that project was so poorly put together, and the consultation with first nations was so deficient, that nine first nations challenged it in court and had it overturned.
When Conservatives say that just removing these pieces of legislation would open up our economy and drive it forward, what they are really hoping is that if we do not consider the environment at all and completely put aside very real concerns that indigenous rights holders have, we can move ahead with these projects.
The next thing the Conservatives propose taking out is the federal industrial carbon tax. This has been in place in many different forms throughout our country. The first to bring it in was the Province of Alberta. It has led to tens of billions of dollars in investments in projects that have decarbonized our economy in really important growing sectors, as well as to finding ways to make our products less carbon-intensive, in many cases at the lowest possible cost.
To think that taking the tax away would make our economy more sovereign could not be farther from the truth. By getting rid of this type of mechanism, the country would face limited market access to the European Union as it brings in a carbon border adjustment because it wants its industries to be able to compete around the world. It has this new mechanism it is bringing in starting this year, and it is not the only country. The U.K. is proposing to bring one in. Australia, Taiwan and other countries are looking to do the same. What this would tie us to are countries that do not want to take action on climate.
The Conservatives also propose getting rid of the oil and gas emissions cap, but this is not even currently in place. Next they propose getting rid of the federal electric vehicle sales mandate. This is a mechanism that was put in place to ensure that Canadians can access electric vehicles. We see around the world that the adoption rate of electric vehicles is going through the roof. In Nepal it is 76%. In China it was 50% last year. The big barrier we have in Canada is that people cannot access the types of electric vehicles they want to buy.
This mechanism is about ensuring that those cars are available, which also leads companies to invest in the charging infrastructure that makes it better for everybody who has adopted the technology. It is also about ensuring not only that can we buy those cars here but also that more and more of those cars are manufactured here. It is a key part. We know that a key ask of several of the United States automakers is to scrap this program, but that would be a big mistake and would reduce the choice that a lot of Canadians are looking for right now.
Next I want to talk about how the act would remove the federal plastics manufacturing prohibitions. It is important to call this what it is: It is about getting rid of the ban on certain single-use plastic items that were found to be harmful to the environment and to humans. These are things like plastic bags that are finding their way into our waterways, oceans and environment. How does it make our country more sovereign to have more and more waste in our environment?
Next the proposed act talks about removing the federal regulatory restrictions that impede communication and advocacy by Canadian energy companies. Again, it is important to call this what it is: It is about removing the so-called greenwashing provisions, measures that every member of the House voted in favour of just two years ago. These are measures to ensure that when a company makes a claim about itself, it has to be able to back it up with evidence. Essentially this is to deal with false and misleading advertising. Again, I do not see how our country would be more sovereign if we give the ability to companies to lie about the products and services they are putting out there. All it would do is make our country less competitive and give an unfair advantage to companies not taking the action they say they are taking.
There are many things I would like to talk about, such as how we can make our country more sovereign, how we can improve our national defence, how we can make sure we buy more Canadian and how we can improve our infrastructure. I look forward to questions from my colleagues to that effect.