Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for his very consistent and almost complete statement of the purpose of Bill C-6.
The bill before us today should have received the assent of this House a long time ago. With the authority to regulate provided by this bill, transfers already made to the National Energy Board by the Department of Energy, Mines and Resources and the Department of Indian Affairs and Northern development are formalized.
Bill C-6 also formalizes the expanded powers of the NEB on pipelines under its jurisdiction, namely international and interprovincial pipelines.
The bill also provides for minor amendments to related legislation. On the surface, it does not seem to contain any original idea of this Liberal government. As these powers apply to frontier oil and gas activity, several provinces where there are no federal/provincial shared management agreements will be affected by this transfer of authority and increased level of responsibility.
For example, the Northwest Territories and the Yukon, which are Crown lands and public lands, will be directly affected by Bill C-6. Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, British Columbia and Ontario will be affected in so far as the regulating of pipelines is concerned. Since Newfoundland and Nova Scotia will be administering their offshore resources jointly with the federal government, they will not be affected by the transfer of authority provided for in this bill.
In addition, the coming into force of the Northern Accord and the signing of a joint administration agreement with the Northwest Territories will, in the medium term, result in the loss of NEB authority over these lands. The NEB would maintain its
authority to regulate oil and gas activities only in the case of offshore resources in the Pacific and in the Gulf of St. Lawrence.
Quebec, meanwhile, has been only marginally affected by the changes to the National Energy Board's mandate since 1991. However, should resources be discovered offshore in the waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence, then the question of resource ownership would inevitably arise, just as it arose when resources were discovered offshore from Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.
Clearly, Quebec and the Bloc Quebecois would set some conditions in terms of the legal and constitutional options of having Quebec's and the provinces' ownership of any potential resources recognized.
In a number of cases involving gas and oil distribution in Canada, Quebec has repeatedly voiced its opposition to various federal policies, notably in recent cases where legislation, regulations and constitutional interpretation appeared to blatantly infringe on Quebec's jurisdiction and economic interests.
I will briefly share with you two of those issues, so as to clearly express some Quebec positions which, I believe, federal authorities did not take into consideration thus far. We are not talking here about pouring out a long litany of unfounded complaints. The Bloc Quebecois was elected in Ottawa both to promote Quebec sovereignty and, in the meantime, to defend Quebecers' interests within the present federal system.
I am well aware that my colleagues from Western Canada are very sensitive to issues concerning natural resources ownership. I must tell them that I share the same sensitivity. I would just like to say that no one will challenge the representatives of western Canada or of Quebec for putting forward what they perceive as their constituents' interests.
First, the federal government is partly responsible for the decline of the refining industry in Quebec. Until the early 1980s, Quebec exported refined petroleum products. During that decade, Quebec lost more than half of its refining capacity and as a result was forced to import part of its consumption.
The economic costs of this change in the petroleum industry were enormous, especially for Montreal, which had been a centre for refining petroleum products in North America since the 1940s. Quebec lost its leadership to the benefit of Ontario. The Borden commission of 1961 is responsible for this decline since it decided to give western oil producers a captive market in Canada. It was also decided that the pipelines taking oil from the West to the East would stop in Ontario-this was called the Borden line. With the coming of the Borden line and the requirement for Quebec refiners to buy western oil which was carried by pipeline only as far as Ontario, Quebec definitely lost its geographical advantage as a refiner for central Canada, to the benefit of Ontario.
The federal government has never repaired the damage done by its energy policy. Quebec lost thousands of jobs. Head offices, businesses and research and development that could have put Quebec at the forefront of the industry were lost.
I would also like to raise another very current issue and that is the ruling made last week by the Supreme Court of Canada regarding exploitation of electricity. That decision led us to believe that other conflicts might occur in the future. The court empowers the National Energy Board to subject the granting of hydro-electricity export licenses to an environmental assessment. This decision is a setback for Quebec which always wanted to assert its jurisdiction regarding environmental matters.
Already in 1990 the National Energy Board had imposed two conditions before granting Hydro Quebec an electricity export license for the States of New York and Vermont. These two conditions provided that these exports should not contravene federal environmental standards and that the energy-producing facilities would have to be subject to the federal environmental assessment and review process.
Quebec's Energy Minister, Lise Bacon, who was far from being a nasty separatist, declared at that time that this federal intrusion into provincial jurisdiction was completely intolerable. In 1992, another Quebec Liberal minister, Pierre Paradis, who was then Minister of the Environment and who is not a nasty separatist, said in a letter addressed to his federal counterpart that the bill he was about to introduce contained elements which were a perfect example of totalitarianism and domination by the federal government and that it continued to embitter relations between Quebec and Ottawa.
Quebec has already successfully appealed that decision in the Federal Court of Appeal. Following this victory for our province, in turn, the James Bay Cree appealed the NEB's decision to grant a hydro facility operating licence in their region.
The recent Supreme Court decision will have an impact on the development of Quebec's hydroelectric resources and will make the costs of any new project higher.
Moreover, the Supreme Court decision imposes a public review to limit the development of hydroelectricity, power lines and production facilities. Before a provincial development project can be undertaken, it would be very surprising if the NEB did not require the equivalent for gas or oil exports, thereby limiting the environmental impact to pipelines, and overlooking anything having to do with the greenhouse effect, air pollution, depletion of resources and other environmental considerations.
I conclude by saying that the Bloc Quebecois is not necessarily opposed to this bill. However, since the NEB will only have jurisdiction over small parts of the Canadian territory, once all the joint management agreements are signed, the parliamentary
committee will have to review this legislation with a long-term perspective in mind.
We must not only straighten out an existing situation; eventually we will have to have a modern approach regarding all issues related to the management of offshore natural resources. We have to take reality into account and propose alternative structural changes which will give each province responsibility for its own future interests.
Needless to say, if necessary, we will make sure each province gets jurisdiction over offshore resources. You can count on us to do that.
