Ed Fast

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

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the opportunity to speak to Bill C-59. Listening to our Liberal friends across the way, one would assume that this is all about public safety, that Bill C-59 would improve public safety and the ability of our security agencies to intervene if a terrorist threat presented itself. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Let us go back and understand what this Prime Minister did in the last election. Whether it was his youth, or ignorance, he went out there and said that he was going to undo every single bit of the Stephen Harper legacy, a legacy I am very proud of, by the way. That was his goal.

One of the things he was going to undo was what Bill C-51 did. Bill C-51 was a bill our previous Conservative government brought forward to reform and modernize how we approach terrorist threats in Canada. We wanted to provide our government security agencies with the ability to effectively, and in a timely way, intervene when necessary to protect Canadians against terrorist threats. Bill C-51 was actually very well received across the country. Our security agencies welcomed it as providing them with additional tools.

I just heard my Liberal colleagues chuckle and heckle. Did members know that the Liberals, in the previous Parliament, actually supported Bill C-51? Here they stand saying that somehow that legislation did not do what it was intended to do. In fact, it did. It made Canadians much safer and allowed our security agencies to intervene in a timely way to protect Canadians. This bill that has come forward would do nothing of the sort.

The committee overseeing this bill had 16 meetings, and at the end of the whole process, there were 235 amendments brought forward. That is how bad this legislation was. Forty-three of those amendments came from Liberals themselves. They rushed forward this legislation, doing what Liberals do best: posture publicly, rush through legislation, and then realize, “What have we done? My goodness.” They had 43 amendments of their own, all of which passed, of course. There were 20-some Conservative amendments, and none of them passed, even though they were intelligently laid-out improvements to this legislation. That is the kind of government we are dealing with here. It was all about optics so that the government would be able to say, “We are taking that old Bill C-51 that was not worth anything, although we voted in favour of it, and we are going to replace it with our own legislation.” The reality is that Bill C-51 was a significant step forward in protecting Canadians.

This legislation is quite different. What it would do is take one agency and replace it with another. That is what Liberals do. They take something that is working and replace it with something else that costs a ton of money. In fact, the estimate to implement this bill is $100 million. That is $100 million taxpayers do not have to spend, because the bill would not do one iota to improve the protection of Canadians against terrorist threats. There would be no improved oversight or improved intelligence capabilities.

The bill would do one thing we applaud, which is reaffirm that Canada will not torture. Most Canadians would say that this is something Canada should never do.

The Liberals went further. They ignored warnings from some of our intelligence agencies that the administrative costs were going to get very expensive. In fact, I have a quote here from our former national security adviser, Richard Fadden. Here is what he said about Bill C-59: “It is beginning to rival the Income Tax Act for complexity.” Canadians know how complex that act has become.

He said, “There are sub-sub-subsections that are excluded, that are exempted. If there is anything the committee can do to make it a bit more straightforward, [it would be appreciated].” Did the committee, in fact, do that? No, it did not make it more straightforward.

There is the appointment of a new intelligence commissioner, which is, of course, the old one, but again, with additional costs. The bill would establish how a new commissioner would be appointed. What the Liberals would not do is allow current or past judges to fill that role. As members know, retired and current judges are highly skilled in being able to assess evidence in the courtroom. It is a skill that is critical to being a good commissioner who addresses issues of intelligence.

Another shortcoming of Bill C-59 is that there is excessive emphasis on privacy, which would be a significant deterrent to critical interdepartmental information sharing. In other words, this legislation would highlight privacy concerns to the point that our security agencies and all the departments of government would now become hamstrung. Their hands would become tied when it came to sharing information with other departments and our security agencies, which could be critical information in assessing and deterring terrorist threats.

Why would the government do this? The Liberals say that they want to protect Canadians, but the legislation would actually take a step backwards. It would make it even more difficult and would trip up our security agencies as they tried to do the job we have asked them to do, which is protect us. Why are we erring on the side of the terrorists?

We heard testimony, again from Mr. Fadden, that this proposed legislation would establish more silos. They were his nightmare when he was the national security director. We now have evidence from the Air India bombing. The inquiry determined that the tragedy could have been prevented had one agency in government not withheld critical information from our police and security authorities. Instead, 329 people died at the hands of terrorists.

Again, why are we erring on the side of terrorists? This proposed legislation is a step backward. It is not something Canadians expected from a government that had talked about protecting Canadians better.

There are also challenges with the Criminal Code amendments in Bill C-59. The government chose to move away from criminalizing “advocating or promoting terrorism” and would move towards “counselling” terrorism. The wording has been parsed very carefully by security experts, and they have said that this proposed change in the legislation would mean, for example, that ISIS propaganda being spread on YouTube would not be captured and would not be criminalized. Was the intention of the government when it was elected, when it made its promises to protect Canadians, to now step backward, to revise the Criminal Code in a way that would make it less tough on terrorists, those who are promoting terrorism, those who are advocating terrorism, and those who are counselling terrorism? This would be a step backward on that.

In closing, I have already stated that the Liberals are prepared to err on the side of terrorists rather than on the side of Canadian law enforcement and international security teams. The bill would create more bureaucracy, more costs, and less money and security for Canadians.

When I was in cabinet, we took security very seriously. We trusted our national security experts. The proposed legislation is essentially a vote of non-confidence in those experts we have in government to protect us.

Finally, the message we are sending is that red tape is more important than sharing information and stopping terrorism. That is a sad story. We can do better as Canadians.

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

Mr. Speaker, I listened intently to my colleague's speech. One of the things Bill C-59 would do is restate what is already Canadian policy, and that is that we do not torture, and we do not use information that comes from torture.

I want to ask the member a hypothetical question, and that concerns our Five Eyes partners, which are the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand, and Australia, with Canada being the fifth. If the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness came into information via one of those Five Eyes partners that, in fact, a terrorist threat to Canadians was imminent, but the minister could not satisfy himself that the information had not come from the use of torture, how would the member respond if he were the minister? What kind of advice would he give the minister? Would he intervene and prevent that terrorist act from taking place, or would he step back and say, “I'm sorry, but I can't”, because of this policy Bill C-59 now articulates more accurately?

[Impact Assessment Act, June 5th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, that member is an invaluable member of our environment committee, and I enjoy working with him.

He did mention the navigable waters piece in Bill C-69. We need to make it very clear in the House that navigable waters is about navigation. It has nothing to do with the environment.

The previous government made those changes to the navigable waters act because government officials with sidearms were accosting farmers in fields who had dug a ditch that was classified as a waterway. They told our farmers not to touch or clean that ditch because they would be breaking the law. Imagine how farmers reacted. In my City of Abbotsford, the community I represent, farmers were livid about how the government approached this.

Another reason we moved forward with changes to the navigable waters legislation was because it was about navigation, not about the environment. The Liberal government seems to conflate those and has taken the navigable waters legislation and thrown it in the middle of Bill C-69, which is essentially an environmental piece of legislation. Does the member not understand that navigable waters is about protecting navigation? It should not cover minor waterways.

Why is his government so intent on changing and trying to remediate a piece of legislation that was actually working very well for those impacted by it?

[Impact Assessment Act, June 5th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague has highlighted many of the challenges Bill C-69 presents. We also have concerns with Bill C-69, but they are concerns that investment in Canada is fleeing. In fact, over the last two years, we have seen the most dramatic drop in foreign investment the country has ever seen. We have seen it drop in half. That is because the investment environment in Canada is one that is no longer attractive and welcoming to the people who want to invest, especially in our resource industry.

Recently, the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain was purchased by the government, which shocked all of us. The last time that happened was under the Prime Minister's father, who was prime minister at the time. We know how that played out. Eventually Petro-Canada was returned to the private sector. It always should have been in private hands.

The member clearly is not a big supporter of the Kinder Morgan pipeline, yet we still have a robust oil industry in Canada. Canada has the third-largest oil reserves in the world. The world still is beating a path to our doorstep, wanting to buy our oil. Therefore, if the member is not supportive of the Kinder Morgan pipeline, does he then propose that we continue to use and increase the use of rail to transport oil? His own province has had a big problem at Lac-Mégantic with oil being transported by rail. Is that his solution to the way we get oil to markets outside of Canada?

[Carbon Pricing, May 31st, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, today the House is debating the 2018 budget, which imposes a massive carbon tax on Canadians. Now, other ministers have agreed to appear before committees to defend their spending plans. Sadly, despite repeated requests, the environment minister will not publicly say whether she will come to committee to defend her harmful carbon tax. The buck stops with the minister.

Canadians are demanding to know, will she publicly defend her carbon tax plan before we have to vote on it? Will she answer, and is it yes or no?

[Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 1, May 31st, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I am not going to comment on what Mr. Kenney may or may not have said at committee. However, there is a very significant tool kit available to the government to address greenhouse gas emissions. I will start by talking about smart regulation.

Our Conservative government began the move toward reducing greenhouse gas emissions by regulating the light and heavy vehicle industry. We were the ones who regulated the traditional coal-fired electricity sector. We started the move toward phasing out methane across Canada. All initiatives can be done using smart regulation rather than taxation.

Another thing is smart, significant investments in technology. In fact, if we look at the Conference Board of Canada report on this issue, it has said that the most significant tool kit that any government has to move forward is using technology development. By looking at the trajectory of technology development, we will be able to use technology to address many of those environmental challenges.

There are other things, like investing in smart infrastructure, in natural sequestration, at which the government has not looked. It has done no science on it. There is also carbon capture and storage, which Saskatchewan has done so well. This technology is working today in Canada and it can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

On the smart use of electricity grids, if we could combine electricity grids across the country, we could interconnect them so British Columbia, Manitoba, and Quebec could share electricity with other jurisdictions in a smart and environmentally responsible way. There is much that can be done. We have some answers.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 1, May 31st, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think the member is average. He earns somewhere in the order of $175,000 per year. That does not make him a member of the middle class that the Prime Minister wants to have others join.

I will go back to the question, which he avoided. How much did greenhouse gas emissions go down in British Columbia over nearly a decade by implementing the highest carbon tax in British Columbia of $30 per tonne? It was 2% when it was supposed to go down by 33%. By any standard, that is failure.

[Budget Implementation Act, 2018, No. 1, May 31st, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, this is the big piece of legislation the government brings forward every year that outlines how much of taxpayers' money it is going to spend and where it is going to spend it. My comments are going to be focused on one piece, which is part 5, the greenhouse gas pollution pricing act.

When members hear “pollution pricing act”, they may think we are going to spend money on reducing pollution. Actually, we are not talking about pollution writ large. There is nothing here that actually deals with things such as NOx, SOx, volatile organic compounds, and the fine particulate matter that sticks in our lungs that can reduce one's lifespan. It does not deal with the issue of methane.

The former Conservative government had great success in regulating those compounds to make sure that we steadily improved air quality across Canada. We achieved significant success. Canada has arguably the cleanest air in the world. I think we rank number three. We are right up there among those countries with the cleanest air. That is significantly due to the fact that the former Conservative government invested heavily in regulating those noxious substances.

However, this act is actually not about pollution writ large. It is about greenhouse gas emissions and the government trying to force through its right to impose a massive carbon tax on Canadians. All Canadians are going to have to pay this tax. The Prime Minister has said that there are some provinces that already levy a tax. He has said that they will have to increase that tax, and the provinces and territories that do not have the tax are going to be forced by the federal government to actually levy a carbon tax of $50 per tonne. That will be expensive for Canadians, because it will affect everything Canadians use, whether it is groceries, whether it is home heating oil, whether it is natural gas, or whether it is gasoline at the pumps. Virtually nothing we consume here in Canada that we use on a daily basis will not be taxed under the Liberal carbon tax that is proposed in this bill.

Of course, the Prime Minister, when asked about carbon taxes, says that carbon taxes are good. He actually said that carbon taxes are good. The Prime Minister has made this carbon tax a foundational element of his climate change plan.

We, as Conservatives, believe that taxing Canadians is not the way forward if we want to address Canada's greenhouse gas emissions. There are many other ways we can address those. There are other tools that can be used to address greenhouse gas emissions, but simply taxing Canadians is not the way to do it.

The federal government has said that the carbon tax is going to be revenue neutral. In other words, it is not going to cost the taxpayer one cent. However, what the Prime Minister failed to say was that it is revenue neutral to the federal government, because it will transfer the revenues to the provinces. He wants Canadians to believe that the provinces and territories are going to refund that money back to their residents. In fact, there is not a province in Canada that has a carbon tax that is actually revenue neutral. What is happening is that the government sucks money out of one pocket of the taxpayer and dumps it into general revenue. Governments receive this money and spend it on their own political priorities, not on the priorities of Canadians.

Where we have seen this is in my home province of British Columbia. It was held up as a paragon of virtue carbon tax. It was a revenue neutral carbon tax brought in by former premier Gordon Campbell, a man I know well. He brought it in with the most sincere motives. Originally, that tax was, for the most part, revenue neutral. The government collected the tax and then returned it to taxpayers in the form of corporate and personal income tax reductions.

We recently had an election in B.C., and the NDP formed government. The first act of that government was to remove the revenue neutrality of that tax, which means that tax now goes into general revenues and is spent on the political priorities of that NDP government. We have seen this across the country, promises that this money will be invested in environmental initiatives, that the money will be given back, but that it will be invested in environmental initiatives. The governments pick winners and losers as to who will benefit from the money and who will not. We know that governments are woefully inadequate at picking winners and losers. They usually get it wrong.

The sad thing is that the Liberal government has been asked hundreds of times how much the carbon tax, which originally was supposed to be $50 per tonne, will cost the average Canadian family. My colleagues in the House have asked the question of the minister. We have had different ministers at committee and we asked them all how much they expect this will cost the average Canadian family. We have heard no answer. In fact, in one now infamous exchange, I asked the Minister of Environment to tell us what the carbon tax would mean for the average Canadian family. She refused to answer. I asked again and again. Finally, she said that she would let her deputy minister answer the question and he proceeded not to answer the question at all. The Liberals have the information, but they are afraid to let Canadians know how badly this will harm them.

There is a hidden agenda at play. What Canadians do not know is that in the backrooms of the Liberal government, the Liberals are starting to talk about moving that carbon tax from $50 per tonne in 2022 to $100 to $300 per tonne. Why? Because they have been told by economists that for a carbon tax to be effective, in other words for it to actually change the behaviour of Canadians, it will have to be $200 to $300 per tonne of greenhouse emissions. Imagine how expensive life in Canada will be with that kind of a tax. That is the secret plan.

The Liberals will not tell us that today, but there are indications in government documents that there are discussions on how they can hammer Canadians with a carbon tax sufficient to change the behaviour of Canadians, without regard for the impact this will have on individual Canadians and on the average Canadian family, on how much more expensive life will be.

I will go back to the British Columbia example where the so-called revenue neutral carbon tax was eventually replaced by a non-revenue neutral carbon tax where all the money would go to the government to spend on whatever it wanted. When that carbon tax was first implemented, the stated goal of that tax was to change behaviour to ensure greenhouse gas emissions would go down by 33%. That is a laudable goal. How did things work out? That tax has now been in place for some 10 years and to date carbon emissions are down by not 33%, not 30%, not 20%, not 10%, but by 2%. A decade of carbon taxes and all British Columbia got out of it was a 2% reduction. This tax will be harmful to Canadians and will have virtually no impact on greenhouse gas emissions.

We have asked the Minister of Environment to appear before committee to defend her estimates and this gas tax so we can find out what this will cost Canadians. She has yet to answer us and to publicly state whether she is prepared to come to committee and be accountable under the Westminster parliamentary system, as all ministers should be.

I am very disappointed with the Liberal government for bringing forward a tax policy that is going to harm Canadians without any benefit to our environment.

[Federal Sustainable Development Act, May 30th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague certainly highlighted the fact that the legislation would ensure that government decisions would not only reviewed through the lens of the environment, but also through a social lens as well as the lens of the economy. There is a certain irony that we are in the House debating this legislation. The Liberal government of course has it brought forward, which is strongly supported, but the Liberals do not even take their own advice. They generally do not understand how important it is to view decisions the government makes through the lens of the economy.

We have seen that with the incredible flight of capital in Canada. Canada used to be the most desired destination in the world for foreign investors. Today, we are among the least desired investment destinations among the developed countries. I would be interested to hear my colleague's comments on what could have contributed to that dramatic decline in confidence in Canada's economy.

[Federal Sustainable Development Act, May 29th, 2018]

Madam Speaker, my colleague from Langley—Aldergrove's riding is right next to mine. We have a lot in common. We used to serve on city council together.

I appreciate the fact that he truly understands sustainability. He referenced greenhouse gases. Yes, we all acknowledge that greenhouse gases have to be addressed, but that does not mean we need a carbon tax. Sustainability does not necessarily mean we have to penalize Canadians by taxing them to death.

He and I both come from the province of British Columbia, where a carbon tax was implemented almost a decade ago. The target at the time was to reduce emissions by 2020 by 33%. Today, emissions are down by 2%. The carbon price is $35 per tonne. It is hurting British Columbians, but not achieving any measurable, truly substantial reductions in emissions.

I would gladly solicit the member's comments on whether a carbon tax has to be part of a sustainable approach to addressing some of the environmental challenges we have in Canada today.