Ed Fast

[Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, April 30th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I have been looking forward to the opportunity to engage in this debate.

I am going to frame this discussion in terms of Canada's competitiveness and our future, what our future will look like for the coming generations if we continue to go along the path of sending terrible signals to the global investment community. My comments will actually focus on how Bill C-48 is poorly thought out and really does not reflect the reality of Canada's resource economy.

I am a proud Canadian, but I am also a very proud British Columbian. Unlike many of my colleagues in this House, I have had the chance to hike many of the different remote wilderness areas of British Columbia. I have had the chance to hike the Chilkoot Trail, where one hikes out of the coastal rainforest in Alaska into the drier interior area of British Columbia and follow the trail the early gold miners took to the Yukon gold fields. I have had a chance to hike the Bowron Lakes. In fact, we canoed the Bowron Lakes, 12 lakes connected with portages, where one is almost guaranteed to see moose and bear along the way. I have had a chance to climb the Rockwall and Skyline trails in the Rocky Mountains. I have had a chance to hike in the Cathedral Lakes area outside of Keremeos, British Columbia. Also, in the northeast corner of British Columbia, there is the Muskwa watershed, Gathto Creek, and Pine River. British Columbia is an awesomely beautiful province, a place we as Canadians can be very proud of. It is a legacy that has been left to us.

Anything that would threaten our coastal areas, any threat to the marine life in our oceans, is something I take very seriously. We know oil tankers have been plying our coastal waters for many, many years. Over those years, how many crude oil spills have actually happened in British Columbia waters? Does anybody want to guess? Zero. There have been zero crude oil spills as far back as we want to go. Why? Because we have superior pilotage, and we have tankers today that are double-hulled as opposed to single-hulled to make sure if they strike something, that object does not penetrate the hull. We now have a world-class marine oil spill response, and we love the government for doing that. That is good. We want to protect our coastal areas.

What we do not want to do is undermine Canada's prosperity as we do this, so we have to be careful how we implement policy. We have to ask ourselves what the Prime Minister's motive is behind imposing a moratorium on tanker traffic off our west coast. By imposing a moratorium, we are preventing Canada from getting its oil and gas products to foreign markets where they fetch the best price. What is the motive? Well, we could just follow the Prime Minister around the world on his global travels from costume to costume, leader to leader. Guess what? We found him in France, where he thought he was safe and he started badmouthing Canada's resource sector. More specifically, he badmouthed Canada's oil sands and lamented the fact that he had not been able to phase out the oil sands by now.

There is the hidden agenda. We have a Liberal government that wants to phase out our oil industry. It wants to put all kinds of impediments in the way of our resource sector to make sure Canadians do not get the maximum dollar that they should for their products.

The Prime Minister goes so far as to pretend he is one thing in British Columbia, where of course he is the champion of the environment whenever he visits, but when he travels to Alberta of course he suddenly becomes the champion of the energy sector.

In fact, what he did in Alberta was to say, “If you impose a massive carbon price on your residents, you'll be able to get the social licence to get the Trans Mountain pipeline built.” What happened? Alberta followed suit. It trusted the Prime Minister, which is something I think Canadians are now very wary of. Premier Notley trusted the Prime Minister when he said, “Hey, a carbon tax and you'll get your pipeline to tidewater”. Well, do we have a pipeline to tidewater? Today we have protesters, no leadership from the Prime Minister, and court challenges. What happened to the social licence? It is bogus.

Along the way, this moratorium on tanker traffic off our Pacific coast is just one more nail in the coffin of completely undermining Canada's competitiveness within the global marketplace. Every day that goes by, Canada becomes less and less competitive, especially vis-à-vis our partner to the south, the United States. I will mention a few things that this government has already done. If imposed, a moratorium on offshore drilling in the north undermines prosperity, because we leave resources in the ground that could have fetched good dollars, but we leave them there.

On the massive carbon tax that Canadians are now being expected pay, members can imagine how that undermines our competitiveness as we layer tax upon tax. Foreign investors wonder why they would invest in Canada and not go to the United States where the corporate tax rate was dropped from 35% to 21% and it got rid of all the red tape. The Liberal government funds a Canada summer jobs grant to an organization that is actually organizing and protesting against the Trans Mountain pipeline. The Prime Minister publicly says that it is going to build, but then gives cash to oppose it. That is our Liberal government.

Then, of course, there is Bill C-69, the new regulations that the Prime Minister would impose on resource projects. The bill would add more discretionary powers to the minister to extend and suspend timelines. There would be longer time frames. There would be new criteria added, including upstream and downstream impacts. This is how crazy it gets. The government would impose criteria, conditions, upon our own oil and gas producers that we do not impose on those who ship gas from foreign jurisdictions like Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan, and Venezuela. The oil that comes from those countries into Canada right now does not have to comply with any of those criteria, but our own homegrown producers of that product, which is the cleanest in the world, and is subject to the toughest conditions in the world, have to comply with those criteria. We wonder why we have lost 100,000 jobs in our economy. It is because of policies like that. Over 87 billion dollars' worth of capital has fled Canada because of the poorly thought out policies of the Liberal government.

As Conservatives, and the word “conservative” implies conservation, we believe that the highest environmental standards have to be complied with. When we extract our resources in Canada, whether it is mining, oil, or gas, Canadians expect that it be done to the highest environmental standards. Canadians also understand that those resources that lie in the ground represent huge opportunities for economic growth in our country, for jobs, for long-term prosperity, and for funding the programs that governments want to provide to Canadians. It is absolutely critical that moratoria, like the one the Prime Minister is trying to impose on our west coast, not proceed, because at the end of the day, Canadians will pay a very significant price for that. Quite frankly, if in fact the Prime Minister cannot get the job done, he should step aside and let the adults take over. Let someone else take over, someone who really understands the economy, someone who understands the environment, and the appropriate balance between the two.

[Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, April 30th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague highlighted why this moratorium is undermining Canada's long-term prosperity. We have run into a situation where we have a government in place which, step by step, is undermining Canada's competitiveness, chasing away foreign investment, chasing away jobs, and chasing away talent. Perhaps the member could comment on a number of things the government has done that really hurt Canada's economic future.

[Justice, April 23rd, 2018]

You're not doing it, though.

[The Environment, March 29th, 2018]

Again, there is no answer, Mr. Speaker, so let us talk about science.

How is it that a government that claims to be based on science and evidence, does not have the foggiest clue of how harmful such a carbon tax would be to Canadians? Has the minister not done her homework? Does she not know how much emissions will go down under her carbon tax? Does she not know the devastating impact such a tax will have on our economy and the millions of jobs that hang in the balance? Do struggling Canadians not deserve to know if these massive new taxes will have any impact on reducing greenhouse gas emissions to Canada?

[The Environment, March 29th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, this week the government introduced a massive carbon tax on Canadians. Government official John Moffet called the tax, a foundational element of the government's climate change plan. However, last week, when the minister was repeatedly asked how much this foundational tax would reduce greenhouse gas emissions, she could not answer and neither could her deputy.

If the carbon tax is so important, how is it that the minister cannot even tell Canadians what impact such a tax would have on carbon emissions?

[Privilege, February 26th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I bring before you today a matter of privilege that could more properly be characterized as an issue of contempt of this House. I accept that the complaint that I will present does not fall strictly within one of the specifically defined privileges or confines of a proceeding in the House of Commons, but it does constitute contempt of this House and its members by the Minister of Environment and Climate Change and her staff.

At page 81 of the third edition of House of Commons Procedure and Practice, it states:

There are...other affronts against the dignity and authority of Parliament which may not fall within one of the specifically defined privileges. Thus, the House also claims the right to punish, as a contempt, any action which, though not a breach of a specific privilege, tends to obstruct or impede the House in the performance of its functions; obstructs or impedes any Member or officer of the House in the discharge of their duties; or is an offence against the authority or dignity of the House...its Members, or its officers.

On Thursday, February 8 of this year, the Liberal government tabled in the House 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. In short, these were the government's long-awaited amendments to Canada's environmental impact review process and took the form of an omnibus bill running some 370 pages long.

The Minister of Environment chose to table the bill at 10 o'clock on the morning of February 8, and 45 minutes later, proceeded to hold a formal briefing by her officials, to which only the media and select stakeholders were invited. It was only at 4 p.m., some five-plus hours later, that officials held a briefing for members of this House.

When I became aware of those proposed timelines and circumstances, my office immediately contacted the office of the minister to express my concerns and demand that I be provided access to the first briefing, which was supposed to take place at 10:45 in the morning, to which only the media and select stakeholders had been invited. My staff was told by the environment minister's office that the first briefing was for invited guests only and that neither I nor any of my staff had made the cut. We were not on that approved list.

I did attend the second briefing at four o'clock that afternoon, when I was given a brief opportunity to ask some questions of the departmental staff regarding Bill C-69. Of course, during the intervening period, between 10:45 a.m. and 4 p.m., members of the media were already filing their stories and sympathetic stakeholders were spinning theirs. Opposition MPs were left scrambling to play catch-up to understand the import and consequences of a 370-page bill. Mr. Speaker, you will have no difficulty understanding how challenging it would be for the opposition members of this House to opine intelligently and engage with the media on a bill of that length, especially in the absence of a timely briefing from the minister and/or her officials. The result was that members of Parliament could not adequately respond to inquiries from the media and the broader stakeholder community because we were kept in the dark by the minister and her officials.

There is no doubt in my mind that the briefing of media stakeholders hours before members of this House received one was done with forethought and mischief in mind, if not by the minister, then certainly by her officials. What other explanation can there be for a denial of my specific request to attend the earlier briefing? There is no other conclusion. In so doing, the minister impeded every single member of this House.

The conduct of the minister and her staff is exactly why the tone and tenor of debate in this House has declined. Someone tried to be clever and tried to withhold information from the House, even if temporarily. Someone obstructed our access to public servants who had important information to share, but granted preferential access to the media and sympathetic stakeholders as part of a plan to place a positive spin on legislation that is critically important to Canada's resource economy. Such shabby treatment of the members of this House is unworthy of the government.

Speaker Milliken explained it this way in his ruling on March 19, 2001:

To deny to members information concerning business that is about to come before the House, while at the same time providing such information to media that will likely be questioning members about that business, is a situation that the Chair cannot condone.

In the case Speaker Milliken is referring to, the government briefed the media before the bill was even introduced. In the case before us, the minister at least waited to introduce the bill, but the principle is the same.

I would argue that with a 367-page omnibus bill such as Bill C-69, the minister's responsibility to this House does not end with dumping the bill in the laps of members and running off to brief the media ahead of members. Providing the media with access to information about legislation before members of this House receive it is, as Speaker Milliken ruled, a situation that the Chair should not condone. The minister deliberately withheld information from members, while providing information to the media. As Speaker Milliken also pointed out, that same media will likely be questioning members of this House about the bill. That is exactly what happened to me, and I expect other members of this House.

On page 213 of Joseph Maingot's Parliamentary Privilege in Canada, he states:

There are actions which, while not directly...obstructing the House of Commons or the member, nevertheless obstruct the House in the performance of its functions by diminishing the respect due it. As in the case of a court of law, the House of Commons is entitled to the utmost respect....

I could not agree more. We in opposition and the members of the Liberal backbench deserve more respect from the minister. We, not the media, are the ones tasked with reviewing and shepherding this bill through Parliament. It is not the media that does that.

Mr. Speaker, I would now like to draw your attention to the direction the Prime Minister gave to his ministers after the last election. In releasing these directions, the Prime Minister said:

The documents we are releasing today provide guidance on how we must go about our responsibilities as Ministers, and I encourage Canadians to read them and to hold us accountable for delivering these commitments.

What did the Prime Minister direct his ministers to do? In the Prime Minister's guide to ministers, which is entitled “Open and Accountable Government”, it states:

Clear ministerial accountability to Parliament is fundamental to responsible government, and requires that Ministers provide Parliament with the information it needs to fulfill its roles of legislating, approving the appropriation of funds and holding the government to account.

Did the Minister of Environment forget to read the Prime Minister's direction? Her actions clearly demonstrate that she believes that journalists take priority over members of this House. Someone should point out to her that journalists, although they play an important role in our democracy, are not the ones who will review and process her bill through Parliament. Effectively, she has failed to respect and support parliamentary process.

The Prime Minister also issued a mandate letter to the environment minister, which is public. In it he states:

We have also committed to set a higher bar for openness and transparency in government. It is time to shine more light on government to ensure it remains focused on the people it serves.... It is important that we acknowledge mistakes when we make them.

Just over a week ago, when the minister was in the House, opening debate on Bill C-69, I had the chance to bring this breach of privilege to the minister's attention. I reminded her that she and her officials had scheduled a briefing for the media well before MPs received theirs. I asked her in the House to acknowledge that her actions were wrong and to apologize to the House for those actions. The minister refused to do so, and in fact bridged into a completely unrelated answer, compounding the disrespect she had already shown toward the House.

She clearly has not taken seriously her mandate letter which says, “It is important that we acknowledge mistakes when we make them.” She certainly made one.

The mandate letter goes on to say:

As Minister, you will be held accountable for our commitment to bring a different style of leadership to government. This will include: close collaboration with your colleagues; meaningful engagement with Opposition Members of Parliament....and identifying ways to find solutions and avoid escalating conflicts unnecessarily.

Again, the minister and her government clearly have shown no intention of upholding the purported higher standards that the Prime Minister claimed he would uphold. Sadly, quite to the contrary, he and the Minister of the Environment have regularly flouted the higher standards that the Prime Minister had set for himself and his cabinet.

Each day it becomes more and more obvious that the Minister of the Environment has very little regard for Parliament and its members. Providing the media and select stakeholders with confidential briefings that have priority over those given to members of the House is a profound act of disrespect for this institution, in fact obstructs and impedes the work of the House, and has in fact obstructed and impeded the members of the House in the discharge of their duties, especially as it relates to Bill C-69.

To that end, I believe, Mr. Speaker, you will find the minister's actions to have been within the meaning of contempt as defined as defined on page 81 of the third edition of House of Commons Procedure and Practice.

Mr. Speaker, I am sure you will agree with Joseph Maingot that this institution, Parliament, the House of Commons “is entitled to the utmost respect.”

As I mentioned earlier, this matter could have been disposed of with a simple, heartfelt apology from the Minister of Environment and Climate Change and a commitment to treat her colleagues with greater respect. Clearly, she did not see fit to do so.

Therefore, Mr. Speaker, should you find that there is a prima facie case of contempt or privilege, I am prepared to move the necessary motion to refer the matter to committee.

[Impact Assessment Act, February 14th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I am going to have to ask her to withdraw a comment.

The 2012 legislation, as I mentioned, was focused exclusively on streamlining the process without, in any way, undermining the environmental rigour of our system, those very legislators who supported it and all the people who fed into the process, and she calls the end of that process garbage. A member of Parliament is calling our work in the House garbage. That is offensive to Canadians, and she needs to apologize.

[Impact Assessment Act, February 14th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, my friend from Peace River country has it right. There is a lot of hypocrisy in the environmental movement. I think Canadians have taken note of that. The irony is not lost on me that on the polluting jets that fly us between Ottawa, Vancouver, and back are the very members in the House who rail against the fossil fuel sector but gladly accept the taxpayer-supported flights to and from their towns.

For some Canadians, the only process they will accept is one that ends in no. We have people in this chamber who believe that. That is an unacceptable way for Canada to move forward. There is no win in that because we desperately need to maximize the value of our resources in the ground, get the maximum dollar for them, which will drive prosperity for future generations.

[Impact Assessment Act, February 14th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I agree with the member that the legislation is full of discretion and uncertainty. Yes, it is more like a framework than legislation that gets things done. It leaves much to the discretion of the government through orders in council, the cabinet, and minister to make up the rules as they go along. What does that do to people who work in the resource industry? They lose faith in the system.

However, I disagree with the member that the Conservative Party eviscerated the environmental assessment legislation that was in place before the Conservative government was elected in 2006. The Conservative government saw that the legislation of the day was handling resource development without, in any way, contributing to a better environment. Therefore, we streamlined the process and the regulations. We ensured we restored confidence in the resource sector to attract investment from abroad so critical resource products could be built to drive long-term prosperity for the country.

On one last note, I regularly disagree with my colleague at committee, but we have also issued a couple of consensus reports. Consensus means unanimity and everybody agrees. There is some good work coming out of the committee, and I applaud my colleague for her contribution to that effort.

[Impact Assessment Act, February 14th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, the part where I can concur with my colleague is that we do need a safe, secure, and sound environment, a pristine environment that we can leave for future generations. However, I disagree with the suggestion that a majority of Canadians support this legislation. Really? It was tabled only last Thursday, 370 pages of omnibus bill, and the member is suggesting that Canadians have somehow read this and support it.

I can assure the member that Canadians do not have a clue what is in here, because the Liberal government has not communicated to Canadians what is really in the bill. The Liberals are hiding all kinds of stuff in here. I have highlighted some of it, and my colleagues will highlight other pieces. This legislation is toxic to our long-term prosperity.