Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise today to speak to Bill C-3, which is yet another omnibus bill that only affects five bills this time. We should be lucky. In finance we dealt with a budget implementation act that would amend some 60 bills, so having only having only 5 bills is a bit of a luxury.
It is not so much the process I want to talk about today, but the substance. We can do much better than this legislation, which we will be supporting at this stage.
I wish to advise you, Mr. Speaker, that I will be sharing my time with the hon. member for Churchill.
It is interesting and somewhat ironic that we are here today on the eve of what we understand to be the government's decision day on the Enbridge northern gateway pipeline. I had the good fortune of running in a by-election in my community of Victoria and Oak Bay coastal communities in British Columbia in November 2012. As we would expect, and as I am sure all members on all sides of the House will have done, I knocked on a lot of doors and met a lot of people from various walks of life, young and old. I did not meet a single person who supported the Enbridge northern gateway proposal, not one.
I have a duty and an honour to represent my coastal community, and I will do so to the best of my ability. However, I believe that if this bill is a bit of window dressing, greasing the wheels for this project, the Conservatives ought to know that it has met utter opposition in British Columbia. Perhaps the most poignant aspect of the opposition I encountered and observed was that it united British Columbians in a way that I had never experienced in my life. I have never seen aboriginal people leading protests of the kind and in the numbers. I have never seen retired teachers and bus drivers, people who are very young and people who are at the end of their careers and indeed at the end of their lives, all united in opposition to what the government intends to do, although I pray I am wrong.
I know the polls say that two-thirds of the population are opposed. However, if we scratch a little deeper, we will not find many people who think it makes sense to ship, in tankers the size of the Eiffel Tower along some of the most dangerous waters on the planet into Hecate Strait, diluted bitumen, a product of which we really have little understanding. We did not even know at the joint review panel whether it would sink or rise to the surface. That is the level of misunderstanding.
I taught environmental law for over a dozen years. People who appeared before that committee, fellow lawyers who cross-examined, said that they had never seen such dissonance between what a panel heard in testimony and what it concluded in its recommendations. It was two different realities. As well, the cost-benefit analysis that would say it is fine to potentially extirpate a herd of caribou, an endangered species, because it is in the national interest, with no evidence for that, is really quite shocking to British Columbians. It is also shocking that we would play Russian roulette with rivers full of endangered species, including certain salmon stocks that would never come back if there were a spill.
It is a product that is not heavy oil, but is diluted bitumen and it ought not to be confused with what happened with Exxon Valdez, which was bad enough as I will explain. That this could possibly be approved by the Government of Canada in the face of ferocious opposition by young and old, aboriginal and non-aboriginal, coastal and non-coastal communities, is frankly shocking to me. I just wish to reiterate that I will do, on behalf of the people of my community, whatever I can to ensure that this wrong-headed decision is never fully implemented in my province and in our country.
This bill deals with a number of matters that are somewhat germane to what I have been saying. Entirely, the Canada Marine Act, the Marine Liability Act and the Canada Shipping Act are three of the statutes that would be amended. Some of the regulatory changes are to be commended, and for that reason the bill will have our full support.
What the government has done in northern gateway is handed the industry a poisoned chalice. As one industry leader said very eloquently, we will get the permission perhaps from the government, but we will not get the permission from the people.
The phrase “social licence” has been used throughout this debate and I know exactly what that industry leader said. Even if government gives us the piece of paper, it will not have given us the legitimacy to proceed, because people know in their guts that this process is flawed. They knew that it was unfair and that a decision built on such a flawed process should not see the light of day.
It really is a poisoned chalice, and it is interesting that I see environmental organizations, first nations and industry holding hands around that phenomenon, recognizing that indeed industry will have been handed a poisoned chalice if the government were to proceed in the face of the ferocious opposition that is out there today.
At the second reading debate, the hon. Minister of Transport said a number of things about the bill, in respect of the proposed amendments to the Canada Shipping Act. She talked about the amendments that would increase marine environmental protection by strengthening provisions pertaining to pollution prevention and response. She said that the amendments would aim to strengthen requirements for spill prevention and preparedness at oil handling facilities by requiring certain facilities to submit both prevention and emergency plans to the Minister of Transport, to which I say “Bravo.”
However, when we do not have officials who are there to enforce those laws, who do not have the budget to insist on compliance, with the greatest of respect, it is irrelevant what the legislation says. We have seen the government consistently cut programs, cut offices that would deal with these very issues. It means nothing that legislation like this would contain pretty words, full of sound and fury and signifying nothing, as Shakespeare would say.
This legislation, like so many Conservative initiatives, might look good on the surface, but if there is no personnel because it has all been cut, if there are no scientists because they have all been fired, if there is no office anymore, as in the case of the Kitsilano Coast Guard office, or spill prevention offices, who cares?
People are not being fooled. They know that what we do in passing pretty laws with no people behind them to enforce them and no political will, moreover, to enforce them, it really does not matter very much, and that is what is so frustrating. The Conservatives are full of sound and fury and really signify nothing in this kind of legislation.
On the amendment, if people do not, for example, submit those plans, what happens then? The minister tells us that the government has administered a penalty. There are $250 and sometimes even a range of $25,000 for a monetary penalty for some matter that may not have been complied with: a) we have to actually do it, we have to bring a proceeding; and b) we have to collect it.
Having worked on behalf of compliance with Canadian Environmental Protection Act, when I had the good fortune of advising the chief review officer under CEPA 99, these monetary penalties and these administrative regimes are excellent, but with no will to enforce them, who cares what they say, and who even cares what the amount is? The penalty amounts may sound impressive when they are increased but again, no will, no fines, no action, nothing. It is sound and fury, signifying nothing.
I am not making it up when I say that the government has done so little by, in effect, closing the Kitsilano Coast Guard Station, by closing British Columbia's oil spill response centre and gutting the environmental emergency response program. Do British Columbians, do Canadians trust the government to look after their precious environment with these cosmetic changes? I think not, and I think we will find the members opposite, 21 of them, will face the wrath of British Columbians when they see if indeed, and I pray I am wrong, the government were to ever allow the monstrosity of the Enbridge northern gateway project to see the light of day.
