Mr. Speaker, it is always an honour to rise in this House and speak on behalf of the residents of Calgary Signal Hill.
It is an unfortunate fact that Canada's economy is stagnating. There has been 0% growth reported for July 2026, with manufacturing, retail and wholesale trade pulling back in our country. Unemployment is above 6%, with youth unemployment more than double that. Projections for Canada's national economic performance are the worst in the OECD.
We know that Canada needs investment. We know inherently, and through data, statistics and analysis, that our economy requires investment as the foundation for growing gross domestic product, GDP. Unfortunately, in the last decade of the Liberal government, for every dollar of inward foreign direct investment, two dollars has exited. That is not the basis on which we grow our country. The reality is it is a significant contributor to Canada's productivity crisis.
In such dire circumstances, Canada remains a land of great promise. It is a country of strong people and communities. It is a country that possesses great resilience, which has never been more important than now. What we need most is a government that does not seek to determine what is best, does not seek to pick winners and losers in matters of business and industry, but rather facilitates the abilities and capacities of our great nation. There is much more that the government can do to unleash Canada's potential. All of this starts with recognizing that the first job of government is to facilitate, and to do that it must stay out of the way to the greatest extent possible.
Industry and business have been clear to the government that doing business in Canada has become too difficult and too hard to undertake. In particular, the first step in major economic projects is permits and approvals, which are too uncertain to justify the work required to obtain them.
It may be a fact some would like to ignore, but investment capital is mobile, and it will go where the opportunity is the best. Over the last 11 years, that has not been Canada. The first effort of the Liberal government to change directions from its prior 10 years of governance has been the Major Projects Office created under Bill C-5. Projects are not, however, getting approved. To date, there have been zero projects approved by the Major Projects Office, despite more than a year since the creation of this new bureaucracy. Everyone does remember the words, “speeds not seen in generations.” Those words were spoken by the Prime Minister, and they remain hollow today.
The path forward is a clear and unambiguous framework for project permitting and approvals that is transparent to all Canadians and allows businesses to plan and to build. Let me say here that I am not suggesting that our country cut corners. We need not sacrifice health and safety or environmental standards and practices in order to grow and develop our economy. As all members of the House know well, Canadian industry leads the world in many areas, including environmental practices, and we must continue to do so.
What we need are reasonable processes that are not in and of themselves the reason projects do not go forward. I think of the northern gateway pipeline project, a project that was very important to my home province of Alberta and indeed to our country as a whole. It was an $8-billion pipeline project that died 10 years ago due to a lack of support from the government. The proponent of that pipeline, Enbridge, spent in excess of $500 million on that project and lost that money. While the press conferences and announcements of today on this subject from the government have been much improved, the anti-business Liberal legacy is large and still overshadows our country.
We need to take politics out of the project approval process when our industry and its expert regulators are doing what they know how to do and what they are expert in. Political approvals are uncertain and a barrier to economic development. We need projects to benefit from a clear, transparent and predictable approval process, not just those projects the government likes. There needs to be a simple harmonization of existing regulations. The one-year time frame or target that has been put in place is not a complete answer to the uncertainty that is holding back our businesses. With the ability of the government to extend that statutory time frame, we end up in the same place, which is political process, political approval and political favouritism. This is not a basis on which we can go forward.
We need more than a process that is a workaround designed to avoid the impacts of bad legislation. We need to remove the bad legislation. We need to fix the foundation on which our economy is built, and that means repealing Bill C-69. We all remember the Impact Assessment Act, known in my part of Canada as the “no more pipelines” act. There is a need as well for a massive overhaul of the regulations that are stifling investment all across the approval framework. These small steps forward, as in this legislation, do not get us to the point we need to get to.
A problem with this legislation is that the year-long time frame only begins once a comprehensive application has been completed. It remains uncertain at what point that approval or that step in the process will be secured. Industry and business have been clear with the government that red tape, the regulatory burden of undertaking business in Canada, is a major barrier to doing business in our country. No reductions in the regulations, pre-approvals and studies required will improve the situation. There is no guarantee these changes are going to have success with business.
The pause on the timeline that the government could put in place is also a recurring problem, as there is no limit on this aspect of the approval process. Business needs to be assured that projects will move forward. We need certainty around timelines so that business has the ability to invest. The creation of zones of national interest is very similar to identifying projects as being in the national interest. Again, it is an uncertainty and a political process, and it is not going to be helpful in moving things forward.
Fundamentally, we need greater transportation infrastructure to support trade. Over the last year, I have served on the international trade committee and we have heard from businesses across all economic sectors that the need for improved transportation infrastructure is critical in Canada. It is going to be one of those things that we will not move forward without. While there are some indications that changes may be made, the bill does not go far enough in that respect. We have much more that we need to do with respect to this process.
An example of transportation missteps is the effort of the government to sell off interests in our airports. That alone, a simple transfer of ownership, like foreign direct investment that comes into Canada to purchase existing assets, does nothing in and of itself to increase business capital available for growth, expansion and development. That is yet another thought that makes me think more of a portfolio manager and less of a Prime Minister, in terms of the disposition of our leadership and the Liberal government.
Going forward, Canada needs an improved foundation for doing business. Conservatives would make those foundational changes and bring in legislation that makes an approval and permitting process clear and certain. I emphasize again that we need cut no corners. We simply need a clear process.