Ed Fast

[Impact Assessment Act, February 14th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, here we are with Bill C-69, all 370 pages of it, full of mind-numbing reading and rhetoric. Do members remember when the Liberals, during the last election, and the Prime Minister, when he was in opposition, lamented, decried the fact, actually, that the occasional omnibus bill was tabled by the previous government? They railed against omnibus bills. What do we have today from the Prime Minister, his government, and the minister? It is an omnibus bill. It covers the enactment of the impact assessment act and the Canadian energy regulator act, amending the Navigation Protection Act, and consequential amendments to other acts. Talk about omnibus. In fact, we are calling it the “ominous omnibus bill.” It is ominous because of what it means to our economy and our resource sector.

The bill is toxic to Canada's future development. It is toxic to our efforts to take the resources entrusted to us and to extract them in an environmentally sensitive way to make sure that future Canadians have a pristine environment and long-term prosperity. The omnibus bill, this ominous bill, does not do that. It does quite the opposite. It undermines our ability to have long-term prosperity.

Let me start off by talking about the bill itself. There are three main parts and a fourth one. The first three parts of the bill are effectively about a new environmental assessment process, a new Canadian energy regulator, and a new navigable waters act, which, by the way, would not be about the environment. The navigable waters act would be about navigation. Those are the three parts covered in the bill itself.

Earlier last week we also saw tabled the Fisheries Act, which contains further amendments that would make it more difficult for Canadians to realize the full value of our economy and our resource sector. It would put more hurdles and obstacles in the way of extracting our natural resources and building critical infrastructure across the country, which is so important to our national prosperity.

Effectively, what would happen is this. We have the National Energy Board. The first thing that would happen is that the board would be stripped of its impact assessment functions, the ones that are used to review resource projects that come forward. I believe that every Canadian and every member of this House understands how important it is to protect the environment for future generations. We disagree on how we go about doing that. However, the impact assessment function addresses the review process that resource projects, such as pipelines, mines, and oil and gas projects, have to go through to get an approval that proves that they are environmentally sustainable and not harmful in the long term to our environment.

The second part that would be stripped from the National Energy Board would be its regulatory functions. Once projects are built, we want to make sure that they are carried on and managed sustainably. Effectively, the regulatory function ensures, through the life cycle of the project, that we protect our environment.

The third part is the navigable waters protection piece, which is all about ensuring that on waters used for navigation, we do not impose impediments to navigation and do not undertake infrastructure projects that would impede navigation.

It is interesting. Navigable water is defined as a water body in which a canoe or a kayak can float. In fact, when our former Conservative government first undertook amendments to the Navigable Waters Protection Act, we did so because it had not been reformed for close to 150 years. Imagine, Mr. Speaker, a piece of legislation floating around that has not been really reviewed for 150 years, and that has definitions like that of navigable water being a body of water on which a canoe or a kayak can float.

Under the Liberal amendments, the navigable waters protection piece would introduce further obstacles that are not environment-related but navigation-related, and that would impair Canada's ability to build and implement critical infrastructure that drives the prosperity of this country.

Let me focus my comments on the environmental review process, the impact assessment process. This legislation would create a whole new body, called the impact assessment agency, which would oversee reviews of resource projects such as pipelines and mines. The promise we received from the minister, with which she went public, was that the process the Liberals have introduced would shorten the timelines under which a project gets reviewed, to provide better certainty for project proponents and to make sure that these projects, if they are environmentally sustainable, can get passed more quickly. Therefore, it would reduce the timeline of the assessment piece by, say, 60, 70, or 80 days.

However, what the minister did not tell Canadians is that at the beginning of the whole process there is a whole new process, called the planning phase, and that process is 180 days, so effectively the Liberals would add another 100 days onto the total process for getting any project reviewed in Canada. This is unconscionable, as investment in our resource sector is fleeing the country. As we know, over the last two years we have had incredible investment flight to places like the United States and elsewhere around the world, where there is more predictability and a more inviting investment environment. We are seeing this play out in front of our eyes, and the minister introduced a bill that would lengthen the process even more. It is shameful.

Here is the kicker. Within that 180-day planning phase, the proponent has to undertake all kinds of activities, many of them new activities, including consultations with the public. The public has a chance to share its opinions on a project that has not even gone through a science-based review. At the end of the 180 days, if the minister feels like it, usually on political grounds, she can simply kill the project right there. Can members imagine proponents coming forward with a billion-dollar proposal to develop a resource in Canada and being told that they are going to have to go through a 180-day process where they are going to have to consult with all kinds of people?

By the way, we are not opposed to consultations. What we are opposed to is consultations that unnecessarily extend the process beyond what Canadians would consider reasonable and common sense. Can members imagine a proponent facing the 180 days and dealing with all this preplanning process, and then, before the proponent has ever had a chance to have a regulatory body, the impact assessment agency, review the application based on science and evidence, the proponent is told, “Sorry, go away. We are killing the project. We do not want your investment in Canada”? Can members imagine that? That is what this bill would do.

The minister has a veto right, at the end of the planning phase, and then, if the project gets to the impact assessment process and goes through that, through all the new criteria that the minister has established, at the end it goes back to the minister and cabinet for a decision, which invariably becomes a political decision.

Anybody looking from afar, with $1 billion to invest and wondering whether to invest in Canada, would say, “At the end of the day, the Liberals are going to make a political decision, so we have no certainty at all that our project will be assessed on its merits, on the science, on the evidence.”

This legislation would also codify the duty to consult with first nations, which is already established in our laws in Canada. The Supreme Court of Canada has spent decades trying to frame exactly what the duty to consult is. There is a lot of case law that provides companies with a clearer idea of the standard they have to meet in order to properly consult with first nations. Conservatives do not have a problem with that. We believe that first nations need to be partners in our prosperity and they need to be consulted, and that has been enshrined in this legislation.

The legislation would also require indigenous traditional knowledge to be considered in the review. Conservatives believe that this provision reflects what Canadians expect when a project proponent wants to move forward with a resource proposal. We believe it is in Canada's best interest to consult with indigenous Canadians and take into account, during the assessment process, the traditional knowledge they can offer to that process.

I mentioned additional criteria that proponents would now have to take into account. Historically, proponents have had to apply certain criteria to ensure that no environmental damage occurs as a result of a project being built, but now my Liberal friends across the way have inserted a requirement that the applicants have to take into account both upstream and downstream effects, and the impacts a project would have on Canada's climate change targets: new hurdles, new criteria, new discouragement for investment in Canada. We should not for a minute think that investors are not paying attention to the debate we are having in the House today and the legislation that is before us. As I mentioned earlier, this legislation is toxic to our long-term prosperity.

Another thing included in this legislation is a broad discretion for the minister to extend, and even suspend, timelines. People think they have 180 days, and then another 300 days for certain projects, and another 450 days for other projects. No, the minister can step in at any point along the timeline and say he is suspending the timelines and that other things are going to be done, removing predictability, which is what investors in the resource sector covet most.

The bottom line is that additional uncertainty has been injected into our investment environment. The resource sector in Canada is responsible for some 16% of our economy. Imagine, Mr. Speaker, 16%. Two million jobs are either directly or indirectly related to our resource sector. Two million Canadians rely on us, as legislators, to get this right, to make sure we balance the environment and the economy.

The minister often talks about the environment and the economy going hand in hand. The problem is that she has no idea what that appropriate balance is, and more and more the Liberal government is leaning to the left, toward the environment, to the detriment of our economy and long-term prosperity. Do not get me wrong, Mr. Speaker. The environment, as I mentioned at the beginning of my speech, is critically important because we are leaving a legacy for our children and grandchildren, for future generations. We need to ensure that we leave them a pristine environment. Quite frankly, if we try to do that in the absence of prosperity, it is never going to happen.

Why do I say that? If we look around the world, which countries have the highest environmental standards? They are also the most prosperous countries in the world. Prosperity and the environment go together.

The intentions of the Liberal government, of the Prime Minister and the Minister of Environment, may be good, but unfortunately they have it all wrong. They have not been listening to the concerns of those who make a living from our resource sector, those who know the millions of jobs generated by that sector. No one should be surprised that we completely disagree with this legislation, and some of my colleagues in the Conservative Party will continue to highlight that in future speeches.

Earlier today, the minister said her goal was to basically develop a policy and introduce legislation where there would be no surprises and no drama. Unfortunately, she missed one piece: no surprises, no drama, no development. Our prosperity is at risk here, and I encourage my colleagues on the other side who are listening to this debate to please give their heads a shake. The more barriers we place in the way of extracting our resources in a sustainable way, the more we undermine the future prosperity of our children and grandchildren, of future generations.

Let me close by saying that there is one bottom line. The legislation ensures more uncertainty, longer timelines, and less investment in our resource sector, which equals less prosperity for Canada. That really is a shame, because we are cheating future generations out of the value that has been left to us as a legacy.

[Impact Assessment Act, February 14th, 2018]

That is shameful, Mr. Speaker. What happened to transparency in government?

Could the minister tell us if this is the new style of government her government promised to deliver for Canadians? Does she stand behind the decision to provide the media with access to a government briefing five or six hours before MPs themselves received that briefing?

[Impact Assessment Act, February 14th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague, the minister, for her intervention. Even though we profoundly disagree with this legislation, I know the minister's heart is in the right place. She and I both share a deep respect for the environment, and we all want to do right by the environment, because we have future generations that depend on us to get it right.

I want to point the minister to the mandate letter from her Prime Minister, directed to her. It says:

We have also committed to set a higher bar for openness and transparency in government. It is time to shine more light on government

It 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;

That is presumably in this House. It will also include:

meaningful engagement with Opposition Members of Parliament,

That is me, members of the Conservative Party, the NDP, the Bloc, and the Greens.

This legislation, all 370 pages of it, an omnibus bill, was tabled last Thursday, at 10 o'clock in the morning. At 10:45 in the morning, the minister and her staff had arranged for a briefing from environment officials. Who was included in that briefing? It was the media and stakeholders. Who was excluded? It was members of Parliament, who were not given a briefing until five to six hours later.

[Fisheries Act, February 13th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, what I would say to them and what I would say to that member, who I respect, is that his suggestion that we gutted the Fisheries Act is not borne out by evidence.

In my earlier comments, I mentioned that the fisheries committee studied the changes we made to the Fisheries Act. Committee members specifically asked the witnesses if there was any evidence that the changes made to the Fisheries Act to make it more responsive to the needs of the Canadian economy, while at the same time protecting our fish and fish habitat, put fish habitat at risk. There was not one piece of evidence brought forward at committee.

I am an evidence-based guy. I am a lawyer. In courtrooms, they always talk about evidence. I believe in science. I believe in evidence. That evidence could have been presented at committee. Any of the members of that committee, representing all the parties in the House, had the opportunity to ask if those changes the former Conservative government made harmed fish or fish habitat, and not one person came forward.

The suggestion that the Fisheries Act was gutted in 2012 is patently false.

[Fisheries Act, February 13th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, what I would say in response is that the legislation we have before us is not about restoring lost protections. Those protections were never lost.

In 2012, we brought amendments to the Fisheries Act that streamlined the act to make sure, as the member has said, that the economy and the environment went hand in hand. This is what the Minister of Environment always preaches but actually never delivers on, because she has never found that beautiful balance between the environment and the economy.

We cannot have a healthy environment without having prosperity. If we look around the world, the countries with the highest environmental standards are those that are the most prosperous. The two go hand in hand.

When the Liberals introduce legislation like that before us, what they are doing is undermining Canada's ability to build infrastructure, to build pipelines, and to develop resources. They are undermining our long-term prosperity as a country.

[Fisheries Act, February 13th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I have looked forward to engaging in this debate on the Fisheries Act amendments that the government has brought forward.

Let me begin by saying that I doubt there is a member in this House who would not promote the protection of our environment and, more specifically, the fisheries resources that we have across Canada. We are an incredibly wealthy country when it comes to fisheries resources. We live in a beautiful country with clean streams, clean lakes, pristine oceans, and we want to protect all of our fish habitat and the fish that find their way into that habitat.

We, as Conservatives, really pride ourselves on conservation. It is something that we did a really good job on when we were in government for 10 years. We believe that being stewards of the environment is one of the things that should characterize who we are.

I would like to share a story with members. I used to be a member of city council in Abbotsford, and of course had lots of interactions with developers, farmers, and people who were running commercial businesses. One day a farmer came into my office. He was very irate. He shared with me that he had just had an altercation with a fisheries officer. The farmer was on his own land; it was owned by him. A couple of years earlier, he had dug a ditch to drain the water from his fields so that he could grow crops and provide for his family, and make a living off the land. As he was on the land clearing his ditch, a fisheries officer, with a sidearm, by the way, approached him, without permission, and said, “Sir, what you're doing, cleaning the ditch, you cannot do. It's going to harm fisheries. You just cannot do that. You're going to have to make due with flooded fields.” As everyone can imagine, the farmer got really angry. That is why he approached me and asked what I could do.

We finally passed on our concerns, as did many of my Conservative colleagues, to the Conservative government of the day. In 2012, that government responded positively and said that there were elements of the Fisheries Act that were not reasonable, that did not reflect common sense. One of the reasons we were having problems was with the kind of work that was being prohibited in the Fisheries Act. It was defined as any work or undertaking that results in “harmful alteration, disruption or destruction of fish habitat”, which my colleague from Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound referred to as HADD.

That HADD standard had some very unintended consequences and side effects, especially for the farmers in my riding of Abbotsford. I went to bat for them, and I know many of my Conservative colleagues went to bat for farmers in their ridings, and the government delivered. In 2012, our former Conservative government changed the legislation to delete references to HADD. We introduced language that was more reflective of what actually happens in real life.

These changes were made, but our Liberal friends opposed them and our NDP friends opposed them, as they always do. When the new Liberal government was elected, it decided to send the matter of fisheries protection and the 2012 changes that we had made to the fisheries committee. As my colleague from Bruce—Grey—Owen Sound articulated, that committee looked very carefully at the revised provisions of the Fisheries Act from 2012 to see what kind of impact they had had.

Members of the committee asked witnesses at committee what they could point to specifically to show that the 2012 streamlining measures by the former Conservative government that reintroduced common sense to the Fisheries Act had had any negative impact on fish or fish habitat. They could not find anything. Not one witness before committee could point to one instance where streamlining the Fisheries Act in 2012 negatively impacted Canada's fishery resources.

Should these decisions to again revise the Fisheries Act and reintroduce HAAD, which caused so much angst among farmers and others who had to do business, not be based on evidence and science? There was no science basis for the decision to move forward with these new amendments to the act. The committee could not show one instance of where fish and fish habitat had been harmed. The government had no evidence, no science, upon which this legislation before us was based.

I did my homework as well. I actually went to our critic for fisheries, the member for North Okanagan—Shuswap, and asked him if he discovered any information that might lead us to believe that the Liberal government actually did some checking as to whether there was some science attached to the changes it is bringing forward today. My colleague said, “Yes, we submitted an Order Paper question to the Minister of Fisheries.”

In an Order Paper question, we can ask ministers any question about their portfolio, and they are compelled to respond. What question did my colleague ask the Minister of Fisheries? My colleague referred to the mandate letter the fisheries minister received from the Prime Minister when he was appointed minister to see what he had been mandated to do with respect to the Fisheries Act.

He found that the government had done no work to determine whether the new provisions of this act were even necessary or to determine what impact they would have. The questions were, for example, what loss protections the mandate letter was referring to. What harm or proof of harm to fish or fish habitat, attributed to the previous Conservative government's changes to these acts, exists? Is there any evidence of harm? What protections were lost, or are alleged to have been lost, as a result of the previous government's changes to these acts that are not provided for under other federal, provincial, or territorial legislation or regulations?

Here is the answer that came back from the fisheries minister:

the department has not been either resourced or mandated to conduct this type of comprehensive monitoring and has not undertaken specific monitoring or analysis to compare the impacts of the changes to the act. The department is, however, developing new processes....

After the fact, the Liberals are now trying to catch up, but this legislation that came forward has no science basis. It is intended to delay development in Canada.

We see what has happened with the Kinder Morgan Trans Mountain pipeline, which has created a trade war between the provinces of British Columbia and Alberta, because there are certain individuals and governments in Canada that do not respect the rule of law. That project went through a rigorous scientific review.

The changes to the Fisheries Act being contemplated today in the House, presented by the Liberal government, have only one intent, and that is to slow down and stop critical development of our natural resources and critical infrastructure that is needed across our country.

I say to the Liberals, shame on them. They claim to be the defenders and promoters of a science-based approach to governing and legislation, and they brought forward a bill like this, which is nothing of the sort. It omits a science-based approach and simply imposes an ideological one, replacing badly needed changes our previous government implemented and reverting to the old system, which harmed so many businesses across Canada that tried to build critical infrastructure and develop natural resources.

That is not the way Canada is going to grow its economy. This is bad legislation. I hope when this gets back to committee, the Liberal and NDP members of the committee understand what is at stake and reconsider the changes they are bringing forward to the Fisheries Act.

[The Environment, February 13th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, the minister spends more time slinging partisan mud and personal attacks than improving Canada's environment. The Liberals have broken more economic promises than we can count. They killed northern gateway, energy east, and are letting Kinder Morgan die a slow and painful death. Now they are creating an environmental review process that is filled with more uncertainty than ever before, discouraging investment in Canada.

When will the minister finally stop her partisan attacks and rebuild investor confidence in Canada's resource sector?

[The Environment, February 13th, 2018]

Well, Mr. Speaker, the more we dig into the new environmental review process the uglier it gets.

The minister appears to have embedded in the bill provisions that will empower her to delay, suspend, and veto a project before it ever undergoes a full science-based review. That is not a streamlined process; that is a minister-knows-best process, which is based on politics and not science.

How can we trust a process based on the minister's whims? Will the minister now agree to remove her veto power from the bill?

[Business of Supply, February 12th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague from Cloverdale—Langley City and I work together on the environment committee and we do a lot of good work there. In fact, we have already had two consensus reports emanating from that committee and I look forward to more.

My question relates to the dispute between British Columbia and Alberta. Our former Conservative government basically shepherded the Kinder Morgan pipeline approval through and it was affirmed by the Liberal government. Of course, that started a big trade war between British Columbia and Alberta. The premier of British Columbia said there is no way a pipeline is going to come through and he is going to do everything he can to stop it, even though he has no constitutional authority to do so. The premier of Alberta has said they are stopping B.C. wine from coming into Alberta.

Does the member see the Prime Minister as having a role to play in resolving this dispute between our two big provinces, and if so, what is that role?

[Business of Supply, February 12th, 2018]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think Canadians are asking for the army to be brought in to make sure that the Kinder Morgan pipeline gets built. The federal government has to step up, sit down with the provinces, and resolve this. The premier of British Columbia knows that the federal government has primary jurisdiction over this. This falls within the federal government's power. The process has been completed, which was rigorous, and the project was approved, with many conditions to ensure it is built and operated in an environmentally sustainable way. With regard to the suggestion that the army would be sent in to resolve this problem, it is ludicrous for us to even hypothetically suggest that.

Right now, there is a dispute between two provinces in which the Prime Minister should be exercising his leadership by sitting down with them and resolving the dispute. If he cannot do it, he should get out of the way.