Ed Fast

[Impact Assessment Act, June 12th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, here we are again speaking to Bill C-69. The minister pretends the bill is going to wonderfully restore trust in Canada's impact assessment program. That is a myth. In fact, she spent a lot of time talking about the process we needed to establish that would restore this trust.

Let us talk about the process that the minister embarked upon to get the bill through the House of Commons. Rather than consulting broadly, rather than allowing the committee and the House to do its work in the time required to do it well, she and her government invoked closure in the House again and again.

The Liberals introduced a bill they claimed they would never introduce, an omnibus bill. It is a bill that touches on a whole raft of different pieces of legislation, including the Environmental Assessment Act, the National Energy Board Act, and the Navigation Protection Act. Before they were in government, the Liberals said they would never use omnibus bills. Then they present us with one, try to ram this through the committee, and ram it through the House, invoking closure.

I sit on that committee as vice-chair. I know the minister spoke well of the committee. That is because she got her way. The majority of the members on that committee are Liberals. They rushed the bill through. It got so bad that hundreds of witnesses wanted to appear on the bill because it was important to their industries or their environmental movement.

We had heard about 24 witnesses out of the hundreds that wanted to appear, and suddenly, the Liberals on the committee introduced what is called a programming motion. Basically, the programming motion gives a set number of days to hear witnesses, review all the amendments, pass the legislation and send it back to the House. That programming motion was so inadequate. It did not provide anywhere close to the amount of time required to actually evaluate the legislation. It is very serious legislation and it is absolutely critical to Canada's national prosperity and our ability to get Canada's resources to world markets. They could not even spend the appropriate time doing the review.

Over 400 amendments came forward at committee, and over 100 amendments were Liberal amendments. This is the Liberal government bringing forward legislation. It rushes it forward, saying, it has to get this done, that it needs to restore trust, that it will ram it through, but it will introduce some of its own amendments because it got it wrong and it wants its Liberal members to fix the mistakes. One hundred Liberal amendments were introduced, so that was 100 mistakes in the legislation.

That is symptomatic of a failed Liberal government. Of course every Liberal amendment passed. How many Conservative amendments passed? Not one. These were common sense amendments that improved the legislation, to the degree it could be improved because it is deeply flawed legislation.

Here is something else, and I think Canadians need to hear this. It is the hypocrisy of the Liberal government. The government has said that it supports the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and has said it will implement that in Canadian law. Members of the NDP and Green Party who were at committee brought forward 25 different amendments where UNDRIP would be incorporated into the legislation, the way the Prime Minister promised when he ran for government.

How many times do members think the Liberals on a committee voted in favour of UNDRIP being incorporated into the legislation? Zero. Is that hypocrisy? I think we can all agree that he spoke out of both sides of his mouth. That is the whip coming from Gerald Butts and his team, who were sitting behind the Liberals telling them exactly how they should vote at committee.

This was the process that was supposed to restore trust in our impact assessment review process. This legislation went through a process that was a sham. The stakeholders across Canada who expected to be heard on it were not heard. We, as members of the committee, were not allowed to speak and debate many of the amendments that were brought forward, because we were cut off by this programming motion.

That is just the context of Bill C-69, the supposed efforts by the government to introduce Bill C-69, which was to restore trust in our environmental review process. It has done nothing of the sort.

Let me talk about the bill itself. We have talked about the flawed process that was followed to actually get this bill through. I am assuming the same rushed process will be imposed in the Senate. This bill has three main parts. It addresses the environmental assessment approval process. It also creates a new Canadian energy regulator to replace the former National Energy Board, and it also fixes what the government believes are flaws in the Navigable Waters Protection Act.

Let me talk about the last one first. In 2012, the former Conservative government identified that the Navigable Waters Protection Act had not been reviewed or amended for 150 years, basically going back to the time of Confederation. This was legislation that was so antiquated. Now the environmental movement had taken the Navigable Waters Protection Act and had treated it as an environmental piece of legislation. They would always trot it out and say the Navigable Waters Protection Act prevents one from doing this and this, and this. “We are protecting the environment.”

However, the Navigable Waters Protection Act had nothing to do with the environment. It was all about transportation on Canadian waters, and making sure that navigation was free and open across Canada. Think about going back 150 years and how transportation has changed. Think about that. This legislation had not been changed.

Therefore, the Conservative government went about modernizing that legislation and it was excellent legislation. It improved the process in which we address navigation issues, especially as they relate to areas of our country that are subject to farming, and farmers, who could not get work done on their lands because of antiquated navigation laws.

However, there is a second piece. That was the Canadian energy regulator. Think about this. This is what the Liberals do. This characterizes the Liberals. They took the National Energy Board, one of the most competent and capable boards of its kind in the world, in fact noted around the world, and sought out for its expertise in the world, and created a whole new Canadian national energy regulator. Imagine that. Was it necessary? Of course not. It is another make-work project for the Liberal government, more costs, hundreds of millions of dollars of additional costs to create this new organization to implement a new environmental review process. Who pays for that? It is the taxpayers.

The government promised that this legislation, Bill C-69, was going to shorten the timelines in which resource projects would be reviewed and approved. Okay. People took them at their word. What came out of the sausage maker? Wow, what a mess, just like sausages look like quite a mess as they are being made. This legislation was the same.

The government said that these new timelines shortened the actual environmental review process, the assessment. However, it tacked on 180 days at the beginning called the “planning phase”, which of course has extended the time frames involved far beyond what people expected.

Beyond that, within the legislation itself, the government incorporated numerous opportunities for the minister to exercise her discretion to extend or suspend a timeline. Therefore, throughout this process that a proponent goes through there are opportunities for the minister to say, “I want to suspend the process right now because I have some concerns about that and that”, and the proponent has no power to prevent that. The minister also has a right to say, “I'm going to extend the timelines. Notwithstanding our government's promise that it was going to be a shorter assessment process, I'm going to extend it. I have the power in this new legislation to do that.” Therefore, the time frames are actually longer, and the certainty is much less because of the amount of discretion given to the minister in this legislation, contrary to what the government had promised.

At the end of this process, the planning phase and the environmental review process, one would think that decisions would be based on science, and that would be it, we have moved to a fully science-based process. No. The government has reserved unto the minister the right to veto a project at any point along the line, including at the end of the environmental review process, again undermining certainty for the investment community, which is shopping its money and investments around the world saying, “Where is there a warm and welcoming environment in which we can do business, where we drive prosperity for the people of that nation, and we are able to build critical resource projects and infrastructure that gets those resources to market?”

This bill does not live up to its billing at all. The timelines are longer and the discretion is greater, as is the uncertainty for the people who want to move forward with resource projects.

It gets worse. Do members remember the minister saying that the government wants this process to be more streamlined, more welcoming, and with certainty for proponents of research projects in Canada? Bill C-69 includes a host of new criteria that will now be applied to those who want to get projects approved, including upstream and downstream impacts of things such as pipelines.

It gets worse. On top of that, the government has included a provision that says that every project must take into account the impact that project will have on Canada's greenhouse gas emission targets under the Paris Agreement. If we were thinking of sending a message to the world that we are open for business again, this would be the wrong way of doing it. Bill C-69 does not do that in any way. We have heard some of my colleagues quote organizations in Canada that are focused on resource projects and that have lamented the fact that Bill C-69 is a huge step backward, and that no further pipelines will ever be approved in Canada based on the legislation as it is.

We tried to improve the legislation at committee. It is not like we sat on our hands and said that it was a fait accompli. We worked very hard. We brought forward about 100 amendments that would have improved this legislation, made it more timely, made it more certain, and made it a vehicle that would attract investment to Canada. What did our Liberal friends across the table do? They voted against every single one of those amendments. That is what we are dealing with, with the Liberal Party.

It gets worse. Let us talk about the precautionary principle, which is also incorporated into this legislation. A lot of people do not understand what the precautionary principle is. Effectively, what it is saying is better safe than sorry.

In other words, if there is anybody, whether it is the minister or someone on the minister's staff or someone in industry or someone in the environmental movement, who says that they think this project, before it has ever been assessed based on the science, it could be a danger to Canadians' health or the environment, the precautionary principle would dictate that the project would not go ahead.

The minister has the power to use the precautionary principle to simply say, “I am not allowing this project to go ahead.” The proponent could say, “Well, Madam Minister, we have all this evidence, scientific evidence that we have paid millions and millions of dollars to secure. This scientific information will prove to you that this project can be built and operated in an environmentally sustainable way.” The minister could say, “No. Precautionary principle. Better safe than sorry. Bye, bye.” That is what is included here.

Members may recall that there was a lot of complaining by the Liberals during the last election that somehow the environmental review process did not allow for enough people to become engaged in the process. What did the Liberal government do? It changed what is called the “standing test”. The standing test is very simply the rules under which Canadians and others are entitled to appear as intervenors before an impact assessment review.

Members can imagine what this would be like, if we had no control over who could be an intervenor. If any Tom, Dick, or Harry in the world wants to appear before an environmental review process but has no direct nexus to the project, or cannot prove that they have an interest in that project, why would we allow that individual to line up in this queue of people wanting to intervene?

What the Liberals have said is, “We are going to open this wide up. We don't care how many people come to be intervenors. If special interest groups use large numbers of intervenors to basically slow down the process, drag it out, and discourage investment, so be it.” That is what we are left with now in Bill C-69, a deeply flawed piece of legislation that has introduced numerous new opportunities for special interest groups to delay and obstruct projects that are of a national interest.

Let us talk about projects of a national interest. The government says that this legislation is going to attract all kinds of investment. We know industry is saying, “Absolutely not. There will not be one more pipeline built in Canada.” Now we have a pipeline, the TMX pipeline, the Kinder Morgan pipeline, which was approved in Canada, which was ready to be built, but, as usual, there are special interest groups that say, “Notwithstanding that there is a process, like Bill C-69, a process that is supposed to be legal, supposed to be fair, we will disagree with the decision, and we are going to fight this all the way. We are going to protest, lay our bodies down in front of the bulldozers.” On and on it goes. That is what we have with Kinder Morgan.

We have a Prime Minister who does have some options. He is, after all, the Prime Minister and has constitutional powers. One of those is the declaratory power under the Constitution. He has the ability to state that a project is in the national interest, and that supersedes provincial powers. Under the BNA Act, interprovincial pipelines are considered federal projects. The federal government has a right to intervene and promote. Rather than doing that, our Prime Minister says, “I am not going to exercise my constitutional powers. I am going to see if somebody else out there in the world will buy this pipeline, because TMX wants to sell it, wants to get out of it.”

Did he find any takers? None. What he says to taxpayers is, “I want you to pay this bill. I am going to pay $4.5 billion for this pipeline, even though its book value is only $2.5 billion.”

The cost is $2 billion more than the book value of that pipeline. That is what Canadians now have from the government. We have bought ourselves a pipeline, where all of the risk now falls on the shoulders of Canadian taxpayers.

This is awful legislation and we were never given the time to properly assess, review, and amend it. That should be a shame on this Liberal government.

[Business of Supply, June 12th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for reminding the House of my role as trade minister for Canada for four and a half years.

I want to remind him of the record of the Conservative government: 98.5% of the value of all trade agreements negotiated by Canada were negotiated by a Conservative government. Did members know that? That is our Conservative government's record. It was that government that concluded the TPP negotiations in Atlanta during the last election. It was that government that concluded negotiations on our free trade agreement with the European Union. It was that government that negotiated the trade agreement with South Korea, Peru, Colombia, Honduras, Panama, and with Ukraine.

It was our Conservative government that renewed our trade agreement with Israel. It goes on and on. I am out of time, but the Liberals cannot hold a candle to this Conservative Party's record on trade.

[Business of Supply, June 12th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for Courtenay—Alberni for his work on the salmon file and his concern for the environment.

One of the challenges the Liberal government faces is that it tries to be all things to all people. When the Prime Minister is in British Columbia, he is promising them the moon. He is the great champion of the environment. When he comes to Alberta, of course, he is the great champion of the energy sector, unabashed champion of the energy sector. At the end of the day, one has to be principled. We cannot sit on the fence. Eventually we will have to make some tough decisions. As well, investments are going to have to be made in terms of protecting our economy, investments the current government has not made.

My colleague from Courtenay—Alberni is correct. There are virtually no investments in improving salmon habitat. My riding of Abbotsford is right on the Fraser River where these fish migrate, and there are super salmon fishing opportunities when those stocks are healthy, when those salmon runs are healthy. The fishing is usually in Chilliwack, the riding next to mine. I wish it were in Abbotsford, but it is actually just up the river. There are tremendous recreational opportunities, but it is a recreational and environmental opportunity we have to protect, and do so wisely in balance.

[Business of Supply, June 12th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I am splitting my time with the member for Carleton.

We are dealing with an NDP motion. A lot of it is motherhood and apple pie. Let me just read it. It says:

That, in the opinion of the House, being a global climate change leader and building a clean energy economy means: (a) investing in clean, renewable energy sources, such as solar, wind, and geothermal as well as investing in energy efficient technologies that create good quality, long-lasting jobs for today’s workers and future generations...

There is not much to quibble with there, except, who is doing the investing? There is nothing in the motion that says who would be doing the investing. Given that this is coming from the NDP, a socialist party, we know that when it talks about investing, it is talking about governments investing in these areas. We know that when governments try to invest in the private sector, they try to pick winners and losers, and invariably governments get it wrong and it becomes a disaster. That is one of the shortcomings of the motion.

However, there is a (b) and (c). Let me read the (b):

....(b) putting workers and skills training at the heart of the transition to a clean energy economy so workers don’t have to choose between a good job and a healthy environment for themselves and their families....

Again, it is motherhood and apple pie. Who could disagree with that?

The kicker is the third one which says that if we want to be a global climate leader, if Canada wants to be a global climate change leader, we must:

....(c) not spending billions of public dollars on increasingly obsolete fossil fuel infrastructure and subsidies....

The first part of that “not spending billions of public dollars”, I think all of us on this side will agree with that. The Liberals will not, because they have already spent taxpayer dollars, $4.5 billion, on the Kinder Morgan pipeline, which was completely unnecessary. On this side of the House, we believe it is the private sector that should do resource extraction, build pipelines, and grow our economy.

When I see our Liberal friends agreeing to purchase the Trans Mountain pipeline for $4.5 billion, when the declared book value of that pipeline is only $2.5 billion, it means Canadian taxpayers are on the hook for $2 billion that did not have to be spent, if in fact they are spending this in an open market.

What is worse is that the private sector had said that it was prepared to build the pipeline and that government did not have to put any money into it. The private sector just wanted a regulatory environment, a tax environment, and the predictability required to get this done. What happened? When it was up to the Prime Minister to show leadership by exercising his federal powers under the Constitution, his declaratory powers under the Constitution, he failed Canadians. He refused to do it. Behind closed doors, he cooked up this deal with Kinder Morgan to pay $2 billion more for the pipeline than the book value would warrant.

That is why government should not get into investing in the private sector. We should incent the private sector to do it on its own. We should not pick winners and losers, but rather provide an environment in which investment can flourish.

There is a suggestion in the motion that somehow fossil fuels are obsolete and that we should not build any more pipelines. Nothing could be further from the truth. It is very clear that countries around the world will use fossil fuels in their energy mix for many decades to come.

Therefore, the suggestion that building the Kinder Morgan pipeline is going to render that an obsolete or stranded asset is simply false. The private sector told us that there is a market for Canada's oil at a much higher price than the North American market will pay, but we need to get that oil to tidewater. That is what this pipeline would have done and that is what the Prime Minister failed to do. He had the power to do it, and he did not. Then, in a fit of failed leadership, he ended up buying this pipeline, basically placing all of the risk of this pipeline on the shoulders of Canadian taxpayers.

This is a pipeline that could have been built by the private sector without one penny of taxpayer dollars going into it. The suggestion that fossil fuels are obsolete is a canard perpetrated by those who have an ideological bent against Canada's prosperity.

This motion also talks about a global climate change leader not spending money on subsidies that increase greenhouse gas emissions. If we were to ask New Democrats in a private moment what is meant by “subsidies”, they would say tax incentives and tax credits that welcome and attract investment to Canada.

Do we want investment in our oil and gas industry? Yes, we do, because it drives a significant part of our prosperity. In fact, my colleague from Carleton will remind all of us that 6% of our economy is our oil and gas sector. That is a significant part of our national prosperity that we would undermine by accepting these myths about the fossil fuel industry disappearing overnight and we will be in this green Shangri-La, where no fossil fuels are required.

This motion talks about not spending billions of public dollars and putting Canadians' health, environment, coastlines, and waterways at risk. That is another myth perpetrated by those who have an ideological position against fossil fuels. I would ask my colleagues in the NDP if they can name one instance of a crude oil tanker spill in B.C. waters. That is the sort of myth that is perpetrated, that there is an imminent threat to our pristine coastal areas. The reality is that tankers have been plying our waters for many decades, and today, it is even safer for them to do so because there are double-hull tankers and what the Liberals call a world-class oceans protection plan.

Canada has adapted, and we understand how important it is to keep our pristine environment clean and pure, but it is not an all-or-nothing proposition. It is not that we have either resource development in Canada or a clean environment. The two can go hand in hand, as the environment minister often says in the House, but does not actually do in practice.

This motion is clearly ideologically driven. There is some motherhood and apple pie in it, but when we get down to the nub of it, it is this NDP hatred of our oil and gas industry and its commitment to shut down the improvement of our pipeline capacity so that we cannot maximize the dollars that we get for our oil.

It is estimated that we leave $15 billion on the table every year because we cannot get our oil to markets beyond North America. What a shame. Think of how many tax dollars that would generate, how many jobs that would generate, and how much prosperity that would generate in this country. We can do better and I hope common sense prevails and this motion does not pass.

[Business of Supply, June 12th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, the member referenced the Paris Agreement and its targets, which the Liberal government signed on to. One would expect that if the Liberals signed on to something and agreed to meet a certain target, they would meet it. It turns out that on the Paris Agreement target, which is about a 30% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over 2005 levels by the year 2030, the Liberal government actually made filings at the United Nations that indicated that it was about 60 megatonnes short of meeting that goal. More recent reports indicate that it is actually closer to 90 megatonnes short of reaching its Paris Agreement target.

It is pretty clear that the government is not going to meet the target it put in place. Does he know how his government is actually going to make up that shortfall in greenhouse gas emissions reductions?

[Fisheries Act, June 11th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I never expected to get that question in this debate, but it is a good one. We were just talking about it.

I can tell the member that I am very familiar with the work of the Pacific Salmon Foundation. In fact, I recently spoke to Brian Riddell, the executive director of the foundation. We talked about that very issue, the recommendation Justice Cohen had made. We were looking at that very carefully.

Pacific salmon are iconic to the west coast. It is very clear that the salmon are facing significant challenges. One of the recommendations, not only coming out of the Cohen commission report, but now coming out of the Pacific Salmon Foundation, is to have a very close look at salmon farming on the west coast, understanding that the most recent science on it seems to indicate that in fact fish farms are contributing to wild salmon mortality and declining salmon stocks.

I can assure the member that we are looking at this very closely. I would be quite prepared to enter into further dialogue with the member on this.

[Fisheries Act, June 11th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I do not know if the member was actually listening to my speech, but that is not at all what I suggested.

The member has suggested that somehow the former Conservative government, in 2012, removed scientific protections. Nothing could be further from the truth. The changes that happened in 2012 were improvements to protection, which focused on what Canadians expect us to focus on, protecting fish. That is something the Liberals never could understand, and still do not understand. Today, they are taking a step backwards, again.

The changes in 2012 were all about applying science. The precautionary principle that the Liberal government is now introducing has nothing to do with science. It has to do with ideology and speculation. By its own definition, if we read the definition of the precautionary principle, it has to nothing to do with science. It is simply saying, “Better safe than sorry.”

[Fisheries Act, June 11th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I will begin with a story. I will roll back to pre-2012.

My community of Abbotsford is the foremost farming community in the province of British Columbia. Somewhere in the order of 20% of all farm-gate revenues emanate from our community. Much of that is from two beautiful areas with A1-quality soil, Sumas Prairie and Matsqui Prairie, where there are all kinds of different farming operations under way.

I used to be a city councillor in Abbotsford. One of our farmers, who I will call Henry, was one of the pillars of our community. He was one of the originals in our community, one of the pioneers. He had farmed Sumas Prairie all his life. One day, he came into my office in a real fit of anger. He related to me that he had been on his land cleaning ditches that he himself had dug. A couple of years later, of course, those ditches were filling in with leaves, twigs, and other debris. He wanted to clear them so that his property could drain properly. Anyone who knows Sumas Prairie knows that it is an area that needs to be properly drained. It is a former lake bed, and it needs to be managed properly. However, Henry was in my office very upset, because as he was cleaning his ditch, a fisheries officer had approached him. By the way, he was a fisheries officer with a gun. He had accosted Henry and said, “Sir, don't you dare touch that ditch anymore. You're harming fish habitat.”

Of course, Henry said that this was a ditch he dug for drainage purposes, and there were no fish in this ditch. “It is fish habitat we are protecting”, said the fisheries officer, “and Mr. Farmer, you're not entitled to do anything with that ditch of yours.”

We heard this from farmers across Abbotsford. My colleague, the member for Langley—Aldergrove, who served on city council with me, can verify those facts. Of course, city council had no power. This was federal legislation under which these officers were acting. That is why our former Conservative government, in 2012, stepped up to the plate and addressed this problem. We removed the focus on what at that time was fish habitat, and we replaced it with a focus on protecting fish, because that is what it is all about.

In light of the situation I just described, our government first of all looked at what is called the harmful alteration, disruption, or destruction of fish habitat, or HADD. We said that HADD was the wrong standard to apply. What we should be applying is any activity that results in serious harm to fish, not fish habitat, that are part of a commercial, recreational, or aboriginal fishery or to the fish that support such a fishery. That is the way the new legislation read, and it was warmly received.

My colleague for Saanich—Gulf Islands, the leader of the Green Party, suggested that Canadian municipalities did not support our 2012 amendments at all. That is patently false. What we should do is ask those of us who were in municipal government at that time, or in the years leading up to it, and we can tell members exactly why this legislation was introduced, and we had the strong support of municipalities across Canada.

Another one of the challenges of the legislation we have before us, which is a big step backwards, is the use of what is called the precautionary principle, which is basically better safe than sorry. The precautionary principle sounds great. We should always be safe rather than sorry. The problem is that it does not work in real life.

I refer the House to an article written in 2011 by Jonathan Adler, in which he talks about the better safe than sorry approach, the precautionary principle. He says, “We all accept this as a commonsense maxim. But can it also guide public policy? [Some people] think so, and argue that formalizing a more 'precautionary' approach to...health and environmental...will better safeguard human well-being and the world around us.”

He goes on to say:

If only it were that easy. Simply put, the precautionary principle is not a sound basis for public policy. At the broadest level of generality, the principle is unobjectionable, but it provides no meaningful guidance to pressing policy questions. In a public policy context, “better safe than sorry” is a fairly vacuous instruction.

Taken literally, the precautionary principle is either wholly arbitrary or incoherent. In its stronger formulation, the principle actually has the potential to do harm.

He goes on to say, “Efforts to impose the principle through regulatory policy”, which is what our friends are doing here, but they are doing it in legislation, “inevitably accommodate competing concerns or become a Trojan Horse for other ideological crusades.”

The problem with the precautionary principle is that it becomes a Trojan Horse for ideological crusades. Let me give the House a great example.

We have a government here that has been beholden to the environmental movement. In fact, the chief of staff to the Prime Minister, Gerald Butts, used to lead the World Wildlife Fund in Canada. Think about it. When we have a precautionary principle, it is people that have influence in government that are able to, unnecessarily through their influence, direct decisions in a way that suits their interests. If we have an ideological predilection in a certain direction, like Mr. Butts does, imagine how quickly we would find ourselves in a situation where it is speculation and ideology that replace true science as a basis for making decisions.

This legislation would establish remunerated advisory panels. When Liberals establish advisory panels, especially ones that are remunerated, they are used basically to allow insiders and friends to benefit from government.

Look at the surf clam issue in Newfoundland where the fisheries minister intervened. He provided special gifts to his friends by taking a surf clam licence away from one company that had pioneered the surf clam business in Newfoundland and giving it to another company that had connections to insiders in government and to friends and family.

What was the end result? This new company, which did not even exist and is still not incorporated, had no boat. Imagine that. It had no boat, but was awarded this licence, thereby depriving the people of Grand Banks, Newfoundland, of their opportunity to benefit, to have livelihoods, to have income from this business.

This is what happens when legislation like Bill C-68, which would amend the Fisheries Act, is twisted in a way that benefits the Liberal government, insiders, and friends of the government.

Canada as a country can do better.

[National Security Act, 2017, June 7th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank the member for her thoughtful question. It is an important one.

Canadians very much value their privacy, and today's use of metadata represents a significant risk to privacy in Canada. I want to assure my colleague that I strongly support efforts to ensure that data, including metadata, that is not critical to protect the national security of our country should be kept private. There are significant challenges to doing that today, especially with the use of social media. It is something that all governments have to take seriously.

That said, at the end of the day, when a bill like Bill C-51 is brought forward—a bill that undermines our national security by making it more difficult for government departments and government agencies to speak to each other to ensure that they have the critical information required to protect Canadians—we have a problem. That is why I am critical of Bill C-59.

Bill C-51 established a very good environment within which our security agencies could do the job Canadians have asked them to do. Again I note that the Liberals who are being critical of that bill today actually voted in favour of it back then.

[National Security Act, 2017, June 7th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I do not accept the premise of the question. The politics of fear and division are coming from members on that side.

When we talk about fear and division, let us talk about terrorism. Terrorism is about fear and division. It is about striking fear into the hearts of citizens in Canada and in fact all people around the world.

The member began his discussion by talking about fairness. We are talking about a bill that is supposed to address terrorism. It is about security. It is not supposed to be about fairness in the first place. Imagine—here we are trying to find a balance of fairness between terrorists and our Canadian citizens.

Canadians who are watching this debate right now have received a very clear message: that when it comes to national security, when it comes to fighting terrorism, those Liberals are way more interested in talking about fairness. We as Conservatives are talking about security and protecting Canadians.