Sébastien Lemire

“Madam Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the House this evening to speak in support of Bill C-39. Over the past several years, Canadians have witnessed how quickly events beyond our borders can affect our economy at home. A conflict on the other side of the world can disrupt energy markets. A shortage of shipping capacity can increase costs for Canadian businesses. A disruption to a rail line, highway or port can affect producers and consumers on both ends of the supply chain. In the face of these global realities, our government was elected on a firm commitment to reinforcing Canada’s economic sovereignty and empowering our country to build bigger, stronger and faster. Our supply chains, built on ports, railways, roads and the great workers who keep them moving, are the backbone of our economy. By extension, strong supply chains are imperative to our government’s ambitious plan to double non-U.S. exports, build major projects and attract record investment. At its core, the building Canada strong act is all about strengthening our supply chains. This ambitious piece of legislation would create stronger supply chains by taking steps toward treating Canada’s transportation system as an integrated national trade network rather than as a collection of separate pieces. The bill would enable the federal government to formally designate national trade corridors and establish performance measures for them. That means looking at the movement of goods across an entire corridor, identifying where delays and capacity constraints occur and measuring how the system is performing. The bill would also create the national trade corridors council. Its role would be to monitor the movement of goods, analyze disruptions affecting trade corridors, identify areas around the system where the system is not performing as it should and provide recommendations to the Minister of Transport. As we invest in our trade infrastructure, these measures would ensure that those investments are directed toward the places where they would have the greatest impact. This is about moving from a fragmented approach to an integrated transportation system, and the reliability of our trade corridors has a real impact. A congested port can mean additional storage costs. A lack of rail capacity can mean grain sitting in elevators rather than moving to market. Our government’s objective is straightforward: streamlining our trade corridors to eliminate bottlenecks and ensure Canadians and Canadian products can get to their destination. The second major piece is our ports. Canadian port authorities sit at some of the most important gateways in our economy. Bill C-39 would modernize their governance and give them greater commercial and financial flexibility to invest, generate revenue and expand the infrastructure needed to support trade. It would create new indigenous advisory councils, recognizing that indigenous communities are important partners in the development and operation of Canada’s transportation infrastructure. Importantly, this bill would uphold the role of ports as non-profit organizations and would create more opportunities for partnerships and capital projects through enhanced flexibility. However, infrastructure is only part of the challenge. The other part is the regulatory system surrounding it. Today, businesses can be required to provide similar information to multiple federal departments and agencies. That means more forms, more duplication and more administrative costs. Bill C-39 would create authorities to enable greater information sharing across authorized government institutions to reduce administrative burden and streamline our process. The bill would also support paperless trade by recognizing electronic transferable records in line with international standards. That means more efficient information sharing, less duplication and a streamlined approach to documentation. Bill C-39 also targets approvals themselves. The legislation would establish a transportation project office within Transport Canada to coordinate federal authorizations and consultations for transportation projects. The objective is to provide a clearer pathway for priority transportation infrastructure and support the government’s broader goal of getting projects from application to decision more efficiently. On this point, the bill is clear. I want to go back to the objective of providing a clear federal pathway for priority transportation infrastructure. This brings me back to the time when there was a discussion around the Confederation Bridge connecting Prince Edward Island to the mainland. I was the minister responsible for that megaproject. At the time, it was one of the largest projects in the history of the country. That particular project, started in 1993, was completed ahead of schedule and under budget in 1997. I am unsure if 30 years later, that project would have gotten through the approval process in a timely fashion. It stands as an example of how we do things right and at the same time protect the environment and protect the various interests involved. Looking at Bill C-39, I view it as providing the legislative pathway for ensuring that the projects this country desperately needs, like the Confederation Bridge in 1993, get to the point where they can be approved. The point is not to eliminate reviews. It is to coordinate them. It is not to eliminate standards. It is to reduce duplication. It is not to remove consultation. It is to make federal processes more coherent and predictable while upholding the same standards we are proud to maintain. Canada needs to be able to build faster while continuing to build responsibly. Again, I think back to the Confederation Bridge project. Finally, Bill C-39 recognizes that supply chain resilience depends on security. The bill would modernize Canada’s transportation security clearance framework. It would broaden the roles and functions to which transportation security clearances can apply, enhance risk assessments, improve information sharing and strengthen authorities around granting, refusing, suspending or cancelling clearances. The purpose is to better address complex and evolving threats, because security is a crucial part of supply chain resilience. Taken together, these measures represent a practical and coordinated approach to strengthening the infrastructure and systems that allow Canada’s economy to function. On a micro-scale, allowing Canada’s economy to function is the same as allowing Prince Edward Island’s economy to grow and function, as the Confederation Bridge did in 1997, and it still delivers today. We need to move goods from farms to elevators, from mines to ports, from factories to markets and from our communities to customers around the world. We need transportation networks that can keep pace with the investments we are making and the opportunities in front of us. That means building capacity, but it also means making better use of the capacity we already have. It means having the information necessary to understand how our trade corridors are performing. It means ensuring that our ports have the tools and flexibility needed to grow, and it means ensuring that when we approve and build major transportation projects like the Confederation Bridge, we do so with the coordination and predictability that Canadians expect. That is why strengthening supply chains is fundamentally about strengthening the Canadian economy. It is about building the transportation capacity, coordination and resilience that Canada needs for the economy we are building today and ultimately for the economy we intend to build tomorrow. This is how we build Canada strong.”