Ed Fast

[Carbon Pricing, June 14th, 2018]

Again, Mr. Speaker, there is no answer.

The news gets worse. The Liberal government has admitted that it will not meet its climate change targets. We all know the Prime Minister is secretly planning to increase the carbon tax from $50 to $100, to $200, even to $300 per tonne in the coming years, so what is he hiding? Can anyone imagine how astronomically expensive life would become in such a world?

One more time to the Prime Minister, how much will this carbon tax cost the—

[Carbon Pricing, June 14th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, enough of the carbon tax cover-up. Canadians are fed up with the Prime Minister's refusal to tell them how much this harmful carbon tax will cost them. In B.C., drivers are now paying a whopping $1.60 a litre to tank up their cars. The Liberal carbon tax is going to add 11¢ to that. The price of everything, from groceries to home heating, is going to go up under the Liberal government.

When will the Prime Minister finally tell us how much his carbon tax will cost the average Canadian family, and what is he hiding?

[Latin American Heritage Month Act, June 13th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I have enjoyed listening to the various interventions on this private member's bill, one which recognizes Canada's relationship with Latin America and the ties we have to many of the countries in that region of the world, establishing the recognition, at law, that the relationship between Canadians and their Latin American partners is a very good one and that can lead to prosperity and to wonderful relationships.

I heard discussion about sports here today, and the culture of Latin America, but I would like to focus today on a thing that has been my passion for a number of years now, and that is international trade. As Canada's former international trade minister, I had the honour and privilege of being able to lead Canada's trade agenda all around the world. We brought in the global markets action plan, which opens up new markets for Canadians who are looking to export their goods all around the world. We also saw in trade an opportunity not only to drive Canadian prosperity, but to help other countries around the world improve their own prosperity. There are some who believe that trade is a zero-sum game: if they win, we lose; if we win, they lose. We have leaders in the world today, very well-known leaders, who believe that trade is a zero-sum game and are prepared to lose opportunities to build trading relationships that are going to drive their own economic growth.

We as a Conservative Party strongly believe that trade is not a zero-sum game, that in fact a rising tide lifts all ships. To put it another way, when we increase the size of the pie, everybody benefits, everybody can participate, and everybody can become more prosperous. That is what generated our enthusiasm for engaging in trade with Latin America. It was our Conservative government under Stephen Harper that led the charge to really seize the opportunity to engage with countries within Latin America. We engaged with countries like Panama and Honduras. We engaged with countries like Peru and Colombia. We also made attempts to engage with some of the larger economies in South America like Argentina and Brazil, and I will get to those in a moment. What drove us was not only a motive to drive economic growth in Canada through trade, but it was to be a vehicle that could be used to help other countries that were emerging from very troubled histories, very troubled pasts.

I will give an example of where Canada has engaged. By the way, this is also a compliment to our Liberals here because they are the ones who started the trade negotiations with Chile. I give credit where credit is due. What happened was that Chile under Augusto Pinochet lived in fear, under the oppression of a tyrant and a dictator who oppressed his people. There was no democracy. There was no security in that country. There was no rule of law. It was chaotic. It was immensely unsafe. Those who remember those days remember the news reports coming out of Chile: extra-judicial killings; and people, fathers and mothers, disappearing, never to be seen again. Eventually, Augusto Pinochet was deposed. He was brought to justice. The country was in shambles. The economy was in shambles. Canada decided to engage with Chile. There are those who suggest that with countries that come from very problematic pasts like Colombia, Peru, and Honduras, the best way of treating them is as pariahs and not to engage with them at all; isolate them.

Canada's approach has been quite different. We have said, provided a country has a genuine desire to emerge from its difficult past and to make the structural reforms required, we are prepared to engage with it on trade. When we engage on trade, we get to engage on building democratic institutions, building the rule of law, delivering better security in those countries. It is all part of a package. It is not just about trade.

We engage with Chile and Canada was one of the first countries to sign a trade agreement with Chile. Today, Chile is the most prosperous, most democratic country in South America. It is a shining example of where engagement made a huge difference. Even to this day, Canada has close relationships with Chile. We still have a trade agreement with it.

There are other countries in the region. Peru was one. It was trying to loosen itself from the grip of the Shining Path guerrillas, who were wreaking chaos throughout the country. Eventually it was able to emerge from that and its leader at the time chose to engage with Canada and asked if it would be possible for Canada to consider a trade agreement with Peru. We said we knew they had a troubled past and there were lots of things to fix in their country, but they had expressed a genuine desire to create a much better country, a much better economy, and a much better future for the people. We engaged with Peru. We negotiated a trade agreement. Today, Peru is a completely different country. It still has its challenges and anyone who travels there will understand that, but it is a vastly different and superior country to what it once was.

The same thing is true with Colombia where we engaged with President Santos, who was trying to make peace with the FARC guerillas and the ELN, the national patriotic army. We said we would engage with it on a trade agreement and we negotiated. At the end of the day we were able to secure an agreement that is today helping to drive prosperity with that country because there are other countries that Colombia has now engaged with as well and has trade agreements with. It is strengthening its democratic institutions. It has a semblance of rule of law in Colombia. Is it perfect? No, but it is getting much better. Canada played a part in doing that, in providing security, developing capacity within that country.

Canada is known around the world as being a kinder, gentler nation. Countries that are coming out of a troubled past find it much easier to engage with Canada than with other countries because we have a different approach. For example, some trade agreements have to be negotiated on asymmetrical bases, in other words, the outcomes are not the same on both sides. We recognize that one partner is weaker and instead of saying it is our way or the highway, we want full access to a market overnight, Canada has an approach that says over time they are going to develop a much more prosperous country, but for now we want to engage and we are going to set up a set of rules that favour the other country for the time being. Over time, they can catch up and we will have a full-blown bilateral agreement that is truly balanced.

That is the kind of approach that Canadians brought to trade, that we have brought to Latin America. We have made a huge difference as we have engaged with those countries. There are other countries that we still have to engage with, countries like Brazil, Argentina, Venezuela, Paraguay, Uruguay. They are all part of something called Mercosur. Actually Venezuela is not part of it, given its recent challenges, but the other countries are part of a larger trading bloc that Canada has tried to engage with. The problem is that many of those countries still believe that trade is a zero-sum game, so that if one wins, the other loses. They are very protectionist. They really do not want to open up their economies, but they want to open up our economy. It has to be a two-way street, we understand that.

I hope I have been able to paint a bit of a picture of Latin America. It is not just about sports, it is not just about culture, it is about economic opportunity, it is about trade, and making the lives of millions of people better, and ensuring prosperity for them.

[Impact Assessment Act, June 12th, 2018]

No, that's not what I said.

[Impact Assessment Act, June 12th, 2018]

I did. Why did you in committee? That's the question.

[Impact Assessment Act, June 12th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, I want to follow up on the question posed by my colleague, and it has to do with UNDRIP, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Implicit in that is free, prior, and informed consent. That is an element that we in the Conservative Party have some serious concerns about because of the possibility of it being interpreted as being an absolute veto right.

However, in the last election, the Prime Minister made it very clear that he would incorporate UNDRIP into all legislation in Canada. In fact, earlier this year, there was a vote in the House on Bill C-262, a bill from the NDP, which agreed that UNDRIP would be incorporated into all government legislation.

At the amendment stage of Bill C-69, the NDP and the Green Party brought forward 25 different amendments asking the Liberal government to incorporate UNDRIP in the legislation, as it promised during the election campaign. On 25 different occasions, the Liberal government and the Liberal members of that committee voted no. They opposed the inclusion of UNDRIP.

Why would Liberal members of the committee vote against UNDRIP 25 times, when the Liberal government made such a clear commitment to incorporate it?

[Impact Assessment Act, June 12th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I have a question for my colleague relating to the social licence that the Prime Minister promised Alberta if it implemented a carbon tax. I would ask the member to comment on whether that social licence was granted when Alberta implemented that harmful carbon tax.

[Impact Assessment Act, June 12th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, the member for Barrie—Innisfil is a very valuable member in the House and brings a very interesting perspective to the issues that we debate here.

He suggested that the Liberal government has consolidated power in the Office of the Prime Minister and that is certainly true. As an anecdote, what happens at committee is that the minister's representative, I will not name him because he is actually a decent person, but he is tasked with being in the room and as we are discussing amendments, he walks behind the Liberal members of the committee and tells them how to vote, how not to vote. If it is a Conservative amendment, do not touch it. He does not care what it says, do not touch it.

This consolidation of power is in the minister's office and now beyond, because we know who runs the Prime Minister's Office. Who is it? It is Mr. Gerald Butts, the de facto prime minister who rules the roost and basically pulls all the strings and the policy initiatives of the government. Because that power is so consolidated in the Prime Minister's Office, individual Liberal members of the House, who are well-meaning people, have no opportunity to bring their expertise or their judgment to bear at committee. That is a shame.

[Impact Assessment Act, June 12th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, as I articulated in my speech, the minister certainly would have the power under this legislation, in Bill C-69, to do pretty well anything she pleases because she would have broad discretionary powers to suspend, extend, and then veto projects, which is the exact opposite of what industry expected the current government to do. People in industry expected there would be more certainty in the process, the process would be science-based, and instead it is something quite different.

To the member's earlier comment on amendments, as I mentioned, every single amendment of the over 100 amendments that the Liberal members of the committee brought forward was passed. None of the Conservative amendments were passed because the committee was not interested in getting this legislation right. It was interested in ramming through legislation that the minister wanted to have through.

By the way, I move, seconded by the member for Barrie—Innisfil, that the motion be amended by deleting all the words after the word “that”, and substituting the following: Bill C-69, An Act to enact the Impact Assessment Act and the Canadian Energy Regulator Act, to amend the Navigation Protection Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts, be not now read a third time but be referred back to the Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development for the purpose of reconsidering all of its clauses.

Mr. Speaker, you will understand why we are doing this. It is because of the sham of a process that the Liberal government undertook to address amendments that were brought forward in good faith by my Green friends in the corner, by the NDP, and by our Conservative members of the committee, most of which were disregarded and treated in a very cavalier manner. This is intended to rectify that and give the House another opportunity to get this bill right.

[Impact Assessment Act, June 12th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, all I can say is poppycock. He talks about consultation with the public, but he left out the members of the House, who Canadians have elected to review this kind of legislation. A government can have all the consultation it wants across Canada, but if it does not provide the elected members of Parliament the opportunity to do their work, that is a scandal. That is why Bill C-69 is a scandal of a process. It has been short-circuited.

The member refers to the process by which the former government introduced bills, which is very similar to the process we have here, where the Prime Minister introduces omnibus bills and he then invokes closure and cuts off debate in the House. Where were the 14 months of consultations and work that the House could do on this bill? Where were they? We were cut short here. Is that the kind of government the Prime Minister leads?

If one were to review the mandate letter that the Minister of Environment received, one would see that there are numerous references to raising the bar on the relationship between the minister and the committees that review her legislation, and on how she relates to the members of the House. None of those mandate requirements were complied with in this case. Again, it is a true shock and scandal to the House.