Fin Donnelly

[B.C. Ferry, March 12th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, this Conservative government continues with their neglect of Canada's coastal communities. On the west coast, they have shut down the Kitsilano Coast Guard station, the busiest in the country. They are also closing the marine communications and traffic service centres along B.C.'s coast, creating unnecessary risks in marine and environmental safety.

Now the Conservative Party whip is engaged in a public dispute with B.C.'s Minister of Transportation regarding the eligibility of B.C. Ferries to receive federal infrastructure funding under the building Canada fund. Struggling with rising costs and a $3-billion capital plan over the next decade, B.C. Ferries is seeking the federal government's help to keep fares low, improve service, and allow it to continue offering robust service to many coastal communities.

New Democrats recognize the importance of Canada's coastal communities to the economy, the environment, and our national identity. Unlike the Conservatives, we are listening to British Columbians and are committed to partnering with the provinces to improve transportation infrastructure.

[Pipeline Safety Act, March 9th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, my colleague quoted her colleague from Nanaimo—Alberni and said that he thinks people in Burnaby did not realize that a pipeline ran through their community. I am not sure how my colleague made this determination. However, putting that aside for now, I can assure her that after the 2009 Kinder Morgan spill, she would be hard-pressed to find a resident in Burnaby, in fact the Lower Mainland, who does not realize that a pipeline goes through that community in the Lower Mainland.

My question to my colleague is why smaller pipelines are exempt. These are important, as she is pointing out, in the transportation of oil. Why are the small pipelines exempt and why is there so much discretionary authority being given to the NEB and the Governor in Council instead of creating the certainty that even industry would want and require?

[Canadian Coast Guard, February 26th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, the Conservatives have made devastating cuts to the Coast Guard in British Columbia. The Ucluelet-Tofino marine communication centre is now set to close on April 21, the same centre that just a couple of weeks ago helped save the lives of four fisherman, and the Vancouver centre is next.

Shore-based readiness, marine communication and traffic services, and search and rescue are all being cut. Why are the Conservatives closing these centres and putting the Coast Guard and mariners at risk? Why are they abandoning the B.C. coast?

[Pipeline Safety Act, February 26th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I know how much work my hon. colleague does in his riding of Vancouver Kingsway.

It is a good question and it is an important one. It is an often overlooked question, especially from the government, dealing with climate change, which some would argue—certainly our youth would argue—is the most pressing challenge of our time.

My colleague mentioned that the government had pulled out of the Kyoto accord. Many Canadians are just flabbergasted, to be honest. They cannot believe a government would show not only a lack of leadership, but would pull us out of a world agreement.

The New Democrats believe we should go forward and tackle this tough problem. We had the climate change accountability act. It went through all the stages of the lower House and unfortunately was killed by the upper house, the unelected, unaccountable Senate when it called a surprise vote to kill it. Unfortunately, it would have been the only national bill on climate change.

This is an important element that must be linked to any kind of resources extraction or pipeline proposals. We must accommodate for how we reduce the carbon in our atmosphere.

[Pipeline Safety Act, February 26th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, it is a little rich that my hon. colleague feels our position is not solid when the Liberal position is all over the map. That is the issue. If we look at the record, it is much closer to the Conservative approach than the New Democrat approach.

The New Democrats feel we need to have proper liability costs. We need to move to a value-added system where we increase refining in our country. If we take oil out of the ground, we must get the most value out of that by ensuring as many good-paying jobs are created from it. We also need to look at a transition to renewable clean energy future. Canadians are looking for that. They are calling for it around the world.

A critical piece my colleague is overlooking is the social licence that is needed from communities in which we are proposing resource projects, whether it is communities in cities or in rural areas and first nation communities.

Both those parties have not taken seriously the importance of having to work with communities, provinces, first nations and individuals.

[Pipeline Safety Act, February 26th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the hon. member for Victoria.

I am pleased to rise in the House today to speak to Bill C-46, An Act to amend the National Energy Board Act and the Canada Oil and Gas Operations Act.

I will begin by stating that Canada's natural resources are a tremendous asset and the energy sector is a critical component of our economy. From oil, gas, trees, fish to mining, the New Democrats recognize the vital role that natural resources play in the Canadian economy.

However, unlike the Conservatives and the Liberals, the NDP has presented a clear vision which leverages our natural capital to create wealth and prosperity, while maintaining a high level of social, cultural and environmental integrity. The New Democrat vision for resource extraction focuses on three key principles of sustainable development.

The first principle is environmental integrity. It requires us to ensure that polluters pay for environmental impacts they create instead of passing those costs on to future generations.

The second principle is partnerships. It requires that government ensure that communities, provinces, territories and first nations benefit from resource development and that we create value-added middle class jobs right here in Canada.

The final principle is long-term prosperity. It focuses on leveraging Canada's natural wealth to invest in modern, clean energy technology that will keep Canada on the cutting edge of energy development and ensure affordable rates into the future.

For far too long, Canadians have been told that they have to choose between the economy and our environment. That is a false choice. It is an approach that is stuck in the past. In articulating our balanced approach, the New Democrats believe that our natural resources must be developed sustainably. Polluters must pay for the damage they cause. This is common sense and is fair.

While natural resources are undoubtedly a central component of the Canadian economy, only Canada's New Democrats recognize the need to move away from our overreliance on fossil fuels and have a vision for development that promotes economic prosperity and job creation that goes hand-in-hand with social, economic and environmental responsibility.

For most residents of B.C.'s Lower Mainland, like those in my riding of New Westminster—Coquitlam and Port Moody, having government approach natural resource development through a collaborative approach, with the principles of sustainability at its core, is a necessary precondition for their support of resource projects.

While the Liberals and the Conservatives have been happy to rubberstamp pipeline projects, the New Democrats believe that major resource projects must be judged on their merits. That means projects must be subjected to a rigorous and robust environmental assessment process. Assessment criteria must include an impact assessment of our emissions and climate change impacts on Canadian jobs and on national and regional energy security.

Public consultations must be credible and democratic, not shallow, limited or paper-based. Projects must honour the legal obligations of our duty to consult first nations. Clearly, such rigour has been absent in the review of the northern gateway and Kinder Morgan proposals in British Columbia, and the same flawed process is now being applied to the energy east pipeline.

Despite the divisive pipeline politics that the Conservative government has created, Bill C-46 is a much needed and long overdue first step toward a polluter pays regime for pipelines in Canada. Although the bill can be seen more as an initial step than a giant leap forward, the fact that polluters will be absolutely liable for harm caused by a pipeline spill is a step in the right direction.

Once passed, Bill C-46 will ensure that any company operating a pipeline will be liable in the event of a spill, even if it has not been negligent and has not broken any laws. For companies whose pipelines have the capacity to move at least 250,000 barrels per day, that limit will be up to $1 billion. That monetary amount can be increased by the government in the future, but the bill would prohibit cabinet from lowering it. That too is a good thing.

Despite the purported goal of implementing the polluter pays principle, Canadians may still be at risk as the limit in Bill C-46 places a liability of $1 billion when there is no proof of fault or negligence. This means that taxpayers may still be on the hook for oil spills costing more than that.

While the $1 billion limit for some companies may be a big improvement over the status quo, it still would not completely cover the cleanup cost of an accident, such as the Enbridge Kalamazoo River spill in Michigan. According to recent estimates, that spill, the largest in U.S. history, cost more than $1.2 billion to clean up, not including compensation for damages, and still damages remain today.

While not a pipeline spill, I think of my home province of British Columbia and the disastrous Mount Polley mine spill that happened last August as an example of how a breach of a tailings pond can have a major environmental consequence, which may not be immediately apparent. With Mount Polley, which many say is the worst environmental disaster in British Columbia's history, the extent of the damage is predicted to remain unknown for years, even decades, as toxins can slowly accumulate in the environment, from lake bottom, to fish and wildlife, to people. This underscores that the $1 billion threshold might not be high enough, given the ambiguous cleanup times often associated with these types of disasters.

Finally, Bill C-46 would actually take a step backward by eliminating the government's ability to recover cleanup costs for a pipeline spill under the Fisheries Act, which applies in certain circumstances to make a polluter absolutely liable without limit. In the absence of such unlimited liability, the government, and therefore Canadian taxpayers, may still be on the hook for oil spills. This is just plain wrong and highly unfair.

If the government is so convinced that pipelines operate within a mature industry, then the industry is one that can and must pay for itself. Instead, the fact that the bill would not completely enshrine the polluter pays principle, means Conservatives are giving yet another handout to their friends in the oil patch by making taxpayers liable for oil spill risks.

I support imposing liability for oil spills on pipeline operators. However, ultimately, it remains imperative that we prevent oil spills from happening in the first place instead of concentrating solely on who is responsible for the cleanup.

To that end, we need better regulation and oversight. The New Democrats are committed to rebuilding a robust environmental assessment process to undo the damage done by the Conservative government.

The New Democrats understand the need to move away from our overreliance on fossil fuels and have a vision for development that promotes economic prosperity and job creation, hand in hand with social and environmental responsibility. However, until modern society can curb its dependence on fossil fuels, ensuring the utmost precautions are in place to prevent environmental degradation caused by spills, including imposing a financial liability on the operators of these pipelines, is vital.

As we have witnessed, a failure to properly regulate the natural resource sector can have a disastrous consequence for natural habitats and the environment in which we live. I will relay the impact of a spill that happened in a neighbouring community of mine.

Kinder Morgan was ordered by the courts to pay a mere $150,000 for a 224,000 litre spill of albian heavy synthetic crude oil into Burnaby's Westridge neighbourhood and Burrard Inlet, which my riding is connected to and shares. Nearly 78,000 litres poured into Burrard Inlet, impacting 1,700 kilometres of shoreline. Following that spill, Kinder Morgan spent almost $15 million in remediation costs and millions more for personal property damage. Imagine this pipeline twinned and the amount of tanker traffic in the Inlet doubling or tripling.

Residents along this pipeline are hugely concerned about an oil spill that would impact their property, neighbourhood, community and, indeed, the surrounding environment. Many people are concerned, and we need to address these issues. As I said, the bill is a step in the right direction, but it does not go far enough.

[Search and Rescue, February 19th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, first the Conservatives closed the Kitsilano Coast Guard station. Now they want to close the marine communications and traffic services centres in Vancouver, Comox, and Ucluelet. Responses to environmental emergencies, oil spills, and accidents for the entire coast of British Columbia are going to be centralized. Just recently, the Ucluelet centre helped with the rescue of four sailors. The centre was listening on local VHF and heard the mayday signal.

We know the importance of these centres, so why are the Conservatives closing them?

[Infrastructure, February 5th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, the mayors of Canada's 19 biggest cities have come together today to highlight the need for federal action. Our cities are facing crumbling infrastructure, a growing housing crisis, and inadequate transit funding. Gridlock costs us billions of dollars a year in lost economic activity. The average lower mainland resident spends the equivalent of 35 working days per year just commuting.

Why will the Conservatives not work with our mayors, cut our travel times, and build the infrastructure we so badly need?

[Employment, February 5th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, the people of New Westminster—Coquitlam and Port Moody are telling me they want real action to stimulate job creation. Last month we were shocked to learn that Williams Moving & Storage, a family-owned and operated company with its headquarters in my riding, filed for bankruptcy.

Under Conservative mismanagement, the economy has stalled. Whether it is the rubber-stamping of botched foreign takeovers like Target, which resulted in more than 17,000 Canadians losing their jobs in 133 communities, including Coquitlam, or the destabilization of Canada's once-balanced economy, the Conservative approach is failing middle-class Canadians.

Unlike the Conservatives, the New Democrats have a plan to create good jobs, which would immediately help working families. An NDP government would reduce taxes on Canada's real job creators, small and medium-sized businesses, and would launch an innovation tax credit to encourage investment.

When it comes to real job creation, only Canada's NDP can deliver.

[Business of Supply, February 5th, 2015]

Mr. Speaker, middle-class British Columbians, such as those in my riding of New Westminster—Coquitlam and Port Moody, are worried. They are worried about the soaring cost of living in the Lower Mainland. They are worried about their jobs and retirement security, and about the lack of employment opportunities for their children.

The current government's record on job creation and economic investment has been lacklustre. Rather than focusing on measures to give entrepreneurs and small business owners the boost they require to create the well-paying middle-class jobs our region needs, the Conservatives' rip-and-ship approach to the economy has left people in my province of British Columbia vulnerable.

I would like to ask my hon. colleague if his government will finally do the right thing and prioritize innovation and small business job creation, and support the NDP plan to invest in the economy and create well-paying jobs in every community across this country.