Nathan Cullen

[Business of Supply, December 2nd, 2010]

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague from Outremont for his speech.

I have a question about energy security. In general, energy-exporting countries like Canada have a plan. They tend to have a plan for energy security because in today's world, energy is one of the deeper questions.

We currently have the Enbridge project and other projects like the ones in Quebec for shale gas, and so, energy security issues are very important to Canadians.

My question for the member is the following. Since this government does not have a plan, what economic problems will Canada encounter without a plan and without thinking about the future of the energy economy and the future of the economy in general?

[Business of Supply, December 2nd, 2010]

Madam Speaker, it is quite interesting to see that the Conservatives have no opinion on this today. I do not know why. I have no idea. Anything having to do with the oil companies is always very important to them—or perhaps not. In fact, they might not be such good friends right now.

I have a question for the hon. member about the boycotting of the oil sands. Again today in the news it was announced that one Canadian company, Concord Trucking, a large company, Avon, and yet another company, Lush, will never again use energy from the oil sands in northern Alberta, Fort McMurray and other places. It has become a trend and we are seeing it on the free market. People and companies have said they do not want to be associated with something that is very bad for the environment.

Canada used to have a rather good international reputation with respect to the environment. Now, year after year, the Conservative government—like the Liberal government before it—keeps doing things that undermine that reputation. It is devastating to hear Canadian, American and international companies say they will continue to support the oil sands industry.

As far as Enbridge's plans and those of other companies are concerned, what is my colleague's opinion on the future of Canada's reputation and the future of our economy if this keeps up, if we allow this to continue with this government?

[Business of Supply, December 2nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my Bloc Québécois colleague and my Liberal colleagues. Perhaps the House will support our motion.

I have a question for my colleague. If the pipeline moves forward, what effect will it have on climate and on the Canadian dollar? That question is very important to Quebeckers. There is something called Dutch disease. When the value of the dollar significantly increases in the oil sector, for example, it has an effect on the manufacturing sector and other sectors of the economy. A very dangerous project like this one on the northern British Columbia coast will surely affect not only the people of British Columbia, but also all Canadians.

My last question has to do with the will of the public regarding this project. If the public disagrees with the Conservative government regarding oil companies, will this affect the government's thinking?

[Business of Supply, December 2nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his comments and support of what we are attempting to do here. This is in response to the leadership that has been shown in British Columbia, particularly from the first nations, but also from the environment community, and now the mayors as well, and at a minimum 75% of British Columbians.

Every poll that has been done on this issue has shown that more than three-quarters of British Columbians say that an exclusion zone is not going to do it. It is not enough. It is voluntary and not strong enough. We need a mandatory ban on supertankers on the coast.

To correct the timeline for the hon. member, it was an NDP provincial government in 1972, the Dave Barrett government, that actually pushed for this moratorium to be put in place. The concern we had in 1972 when this ball got rolling was the federal government simply verbally stated there should be no supertankers off the coast but it never wrote anything down. That must be a regret for the hon. member.

More important and much more recent in history, the hon. member for Victoria, who in massive public consultation with environment groups, such as Dogwood Initiative, put a motion before the House in 2007, which said that there must be a zone. I welcome the Liberals to the New Democrats' fight here.

There are letters from environment ministers in the former Liberal government which say that this moratorium does not apply to any shipping supertanker traffic. That was the Liberal government in 2005.

I wonder if there is any regret from the Liberals in saying that we should have written something down, and then as recently as 2005 denying the need for the existence of a mandatory non-voluntary exclusion zone for tanker traffic.

[Business of Supply, December 2nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, in effect the government is now saying, after the first nations summit, after the UBCM, which is made up all the mayors and councillors of British Columbia, after every environmental group in the province, after all these groups, that all the mayors and councillors are wrong, that all the leaders of the first nations groups in B.C. are wrong, that the businesses that are represented on the central north coast and in the interior that are saying there is too much risk in this project are wrong and that the government knows best, that the raw export of materials out of Canada, like we did with logs, like we are doing with fish and mining, is somehow good for the Canadian economy.

A voluntary exclusion zone is not going to get it done. We know that. The words themselves are “voluntary exclusion zones for north-south traffic”. And this is my point to my friend from Abbotsford, if it is too dangerous to run supertankers from Alaska through the inside passage north to south, why is it suddenly safe and okay to run them through the same inside passage east to west? It is the same water. It is the same part of the world. If it is dangerous for the Alaskans to do it, certainly it is dangerous for us to do it.

The government itself has declared a marine park in the area--

[Business of Supply, December 2nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, there a couple of things I want to focus on, primarily.

The government is essentially saying that moving tankers through the inside passage is safe.

I would welcome my friend to come up to Skeena and actually go on the route with me so that he can visually see what is being proposed and how dangerous it really is because of the nature of the environment that we are talking about.

We are talking about risk/benefit at the end of the day. We are talking about what risks the people of the north coast and along the pipeline route are being asked to take on, versus what benefits are meant to be accrued. This is a fair question,

It is interesting that the government, this same government, blocked an LNG proposal in Maine through waters on the east coast. The veterans affairs minister said, “We've made it perfectly clear why we've taken that position”--against LNG tankers--“to protect our environment, our citizens and our economy in terms of the fishery.... There's too much at stake. There'll be no equivocation or wavering whatever.”

It was okay to block a Maine LNG terminal, which is actually less dangerous than the one that is being proposed in Kitimat, but it is not okay to do so on the west coast.

My question is, if this is about the benefit, the proposal in front of the government right now is to export raw bitumen through the pipeline and into these tankers, exporting jobs out of Canada, thousands upon thousands of jobs, 520,000 barrels a day, those are jobs, is the government not concerned at all that it is promoting and enabling projects that would hurt Canada's own industry?

[Business of Supply, December 2nd, 2010]

I will remind my friend from British Columbia that this is absolutely possible in B.C.

This is what an audit from the Coast Guard said about its capacity to respond to a spill:

The Canadian Coast Guard lacks the training, equipment and management systems to fulfill its duties to respond to offshore pollution...such as oil spills.

This is from an internal audit of the Coast Guard. This is not some outside group saying that the Coast Guard is not well prepared.

How can my friend say Canadians can rest assured that the safety mechanisms are in place and that the Coast Guard will do it? The Coast Guard has audited itself and has found it is not able to do it.

[Business of Supply, December 2nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, it is curious that the government could not find anybody from British Columbia to talk about this other than the member from the source of this oil in the tar sands. It is fascinating.

He mentioned in his speech that Canadians could rest assured because the Coast Guard was well-equipped to handle any major oil spills from supertankers of the B.C coast, which is what we are talking about today. There have been two major spills from ships in the last five years on that very coast.

[Business of Supply, December 2nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, as I said earlier, by creating such an element of uncertainty, this is actually doing harm to the very industry the government hopes to support.

On one hand, the government is saying there is some sort of tanker moratorium, be it voluntary or otherwise. On the other hand, it is telling Enbridge to please apply for a pipeline project that is going to enable 225 tankers in the same place the government says there may be a moratorium. That uncertainty is a killer to business. Everybody knows that.

Another element of this project which is important to my colleague from Timmins—James Bay and anybody in this House who happens to represent a resource constituency, a place that draws from our natural environment, is that this is all for raw export, export of raw bitumen to other places to do the upgrading. This represents thousands of jobs.

It also helps create, as the finance minister will well know, the precarious nature of what is often called Dutch disease, where the Canadian dollar in fact becomes a petrodollar. Every time another tar sands operation is developed, the dollar incrementally rises and manufacturing in places like Quebec, Ontario, even in Alberta itself, becomes harder and harder to do. It becomes harder and harder for us to compete.

This is a known economic reality, and it is being perpetrated by a government that agrees to everything if it has the name “tar sands” attached to it.

[Business of Supply, December 2nd, 2010]

Mr. Speaker, when the government announced the Gwaii Haanas marine protected area, it congratulated itself extensively, noting the unique nature of this part of the marine environment. It is located off the southern tip of Gwaii Haanas, at the very end of what was formerly known as the Queen Charlotte Islands. Jim Prentice, the environment minister at the time, and the current environment minister have both said how important it is to have this marine protected area for all sorts of reasons, cultural, economic and environmental.

However, the government is proposing to overlay on top of that marine protected area supertanker traffic, oil tanker traffic, which then leads, as industry has told us, to offshore drilling in the same area.

This should not surprise Canadians too much. Canadians can be forgiven for being a little cynical of the government's plans around the marine protected environment because last year, the Prime Minister was up in the Arctic announcing a beluga sanctuary. What a lovely idea. No one would argue against that. However, the Prime Minister neglected to mention that the government had issued oil and gas drilling leases completely around that little postage stamp of a sanctuary. The belugas will be ducking oil and gas rigs on their way to the sanctuary. And by the way, oil and gas drilling is also permitted in the beluga sanctuary.

That is what the government perceives as conservation. It is clearly not.

In terms of Vancouver, I can get into it a little later, but consultation is needed there as much as it is needed on the north coast. Everybody who will be impacted must be involved. The first nations will be speaking loudly and strongly to this.