Discussion · Private Members' Business
Branden Leslie Conservative
“I support this bill because sharing flood and drought data helps protect communities. But the Liberals weakened it. They removed requirements to identify specific homes and roads at risk, and they made creating a forecasting service optional instead of mandatory. We need actual action, not just another government plan.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is great to see you in the chair. I hope members will indulge me by allowing me to acknowledge that today is a very special day for my family. Today is my daughter Morgan’s first birthday. After a few challenges after her birth, the lead-up to her birthday and the celebration this weekend offer us as a family much time to reflect upon and appreciate just how tough my little girl is and how blessed we are to have her in our lives. I wish Morgan, on behalf of Mama, Maeve and Dada, a happy first birthday. We love her so much, and I cannot wait to get home to celebrate with her. Of course, I want to take a moment to wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving as well. We live in a wonderful country, and even with the challenges we are facing as a nation, we have a heck of a lot to be thankful for. However, for many families, times are tough. With the ever-rising cost of groceries, housing and life’s other necessities, putting on a big Thanksgiving dinner is not without tough choices for many and is impossible for others. As we count our blessings, let us remember those people who are struggling, and lend a hand wherever we can. I also want to offer a special thanks to our first responders, our health care workers, our military personnel and everyone else who will be away from their family this weekend, serving and caring for others. Let us reflect on everything we have to be thankful for, be inspired to help others and ensure that we remind all those we love just how grateful we are to have them in our own life. In terms of the legislation before us today, there is something almost uniquely Liberal about the situation. The Liberals spent years telling Canadians that the issue was urgent, and just when they finally got around to doing something about it and had a chance to pass legislation, they watered it down. That is roughly the story of Bill C-241. I will begin by saying that flood and drought forecasting is very important, particularly in my neck of the woods. If there is a better way to share data and improve forecasting, we should pursue it. That is why Conservatives will support the bill, but supporting the objective does not mean pretending the process that got us here made any sense. The legislation was here before, in the last Parliament, in fact, as Bill C-317. It received unanimous support in the House but then died when Parliament was prorogued. It came back in the current Parliament as Bill C-241. The sponsor came before the environment committee and told us that the bill was essential. She spoke about flooded homes, damaged infrastructure and the need for a national strategy. That is fair enough, but that immediately raised an obvious question to me: If the issue was so urgent, why had the government not acted already? I asked the sponsor that question directly. The previous bill had passed roughly 18 months earlier. The Minister of Environment did not need to wait for another private member’s bill to begin developing the strategy that is talked about in this legislation. The answer was that the sponsor could not speak to why the minister had not done it. The answer became even more interesting when departmental officials appeared. One of the officials told us that the government does not actually need any legislation to create this strategy. She said, “We don’t need a bill to create a strategy.” Think about that. The government already has the authority to do this. This issue is supposedly urgent. The minister could have gotten to work, but the government just decided to wait. Then the bill came back, and Liberal MPs decided it was still somewhat too ambitious of a bill. That is where it all gets very strange. The original bill required the strategy to assess modelling that would identify properties and infrastructure at risk from flooding, which is pretty specific. If somebody tells me they are developing flood modelling, it seems reasonable to ask where the water might go. The Liberals amended that language and replaced it with something much broader about modelling that would simply “support flood and drought forecasting”. I asked why they had done that. If the Liberals wanted broader language, why not add broader language? Why would they delete the specific requirement to identify homes, roads, infrastructure and properties at risk? Officials said that the broader language could capture more activities, which is fine, but the government seems to think that the less a law requires, the better designed it is. Sometimes specificity is useful. If my house is about to flood, I am less interested in learning that the government has developed a broad suite of flexible modelling capabilities than I am in knowing whether or not the water is about to reach my basement. Then we came to the most significant change with the amendment from the government. The original bill required the preparation of a proposal for a national flood and drought forecasting service built around federal and provincial co-operation. It would not be the creation of the service. It would not have billions of dollars tied to it. It would not be another department. It was merely a proposal. The Liberals decided that might be going a little too far, though, and their amendment inserted language about measures the Government of Canada “may take”. In legislation, as we all should know in this place, words such as “shall”, “must” and “may” are always there for a reason, and they mean different things. If Parliament intends something to happen, it generally does not write, “Government may possibly consider getting around to it if everyone still feels like it later, maybe.” The parliamentary secretary said he did not want to be too prescriptive. He wanted latitude. “Latitude” is a wonderful word in government. It usually means there will be plenty of room to avoid doing whatever Parliament thought it was asking for. I asked officials directly whether the new wording meant the minister was permitted to take these measures but was not actually required to. The answer was clear: The government would no longer be required to act once the government’s amendments were passed. The strategy would have to include possible measures, but it would not direct the minister or the government to do anything whatsoever after the government passed its amendments. Apparently, even a plan to make a plan was a bit too much commitment for the Liberals. I asked what the point of a national strategy is if national strategies do not actually direct government action. The answer was that the strategy would, to use the famous new buzzword, “catalyze” people and bring them together. Now, I am sure these meetings would be excellent. There might even be sandwiches at them. However, Canadians living in flood zones are looking for something slightly more useful. That is where an important difference became clear. Measuring water levels is not the same thing as predicting a flood. The national hydrometric program measures water levels and water flows. That is useful, but officials confirmed that it does not itself issue flood warnings. Provinces and territories take that data and turn it into warnings and alerts. I asked the obvious question. Collecting the measurement is not the same thing as producing the forecast. If a river gauge says that the water is rising, somebody still has to go and tell the mayor whether the road is expected to be underwater tomorrow. That difference is precisely why the original proposal for a co-operative forecasting service had some value and why Conservatives voted for it at second reading, yet that was the part the government decided to make optional. We have also heard a great deal about coordination. The Canada Water Agency exists in a federal government where more than 20 different departments and agencies already have some sort of freshwater responsibility. I asked what special authority or capability the new agency had that all these others did not. The answer came back largely to coordination, committees, agreements and funding programs. I asked why, if fragmentation was the problem, the solution was to create department 21. I asked what Canadians would notice if we did not have a Canada Water Agency tomorrow. There was nobody at the table that could give me a straight answer on that one. That is the broader lesson here. The government is very good at announcing coordination and plans. The Liberals’ favourite solution to a coordination problem is to create another layer of coordination to coordinate the coordinators. Eventually, somebody asks what actually changes with all this coordination. Better data matters, but data alone does not solve the problem. Writing a strategy is the easy part. Making sure it leads to better decisions is what counts; it is all that counts. That brings us back to the bill before us. There are still worthwhile things in it, despite the government’s amendments. Let us not pretend that the Liberals on the environment committee made this legislation better in any way. They did not. They made some of the clearest language less specific. They took one of the few tangible outcomes and made it conditional on the minister deciding that maybe they want to do it. What are we left with? The Liberals say floods and droughts are increasingly serious, and they are. When they had the bill in front of them, they apparently decided the biggest problem was that it asked the government to actually do something about it. However, when a community is flooding, Canadians do not need another strategy; they need action. It is time for action.”
Mr. Speaker, it is great to see you in the chair. I hope members will indulge me by allowing me to acknowledge that today is a very special day for my family. Today is my daughter Morgan’s first birthday. After a few challenges after her birth, the lead-up to her birthday and the celebration this weekend offer us as a family much time to reflect upon and appreciate just how tough my little girl is and how blessed we are to have her in our lives. I wish Morgan, on behalf of Mama, Maeve and Dada, a happy first birthday. We love her so much, and I cannot wait to get home to celebrate with her. Of course, I want to take a moment to wish everybody a happy Thanksgiving as well. We live in a wonderful country, and even with the challenges we are facing as a nation, we have a heck of a lot to be thankful for. However, for many families, times are tough. With the ever-rising cost of groceries, housing and life’s other necessities, putting on a big Thanksgiving dinner is not without tough choices for many and is impossible for others. As we count our blessings, let us remember those people who are struggling, and lend a hand wherever we can. I also want to offer a special thanks to our first responders, our health care workers, our military personnel and everyone else who will be away from their family this weekend, serving and caring for others. Let us reflect on everything we have to be thankful for, be inspired to help others and ensure that we remind all those we love just how grateful we are to have them in our own life. In terms of the legislation before us today, there is something almost uniquely Liberal about the situation. The Liberals spent years telling Canadians that the issue was urgent, and just when they finally got around to doing something about it and had a chance to pass legislation, they watered it down. That is roughly the story of Bill C-241. I will begin by saying that flood and drought forecasting is very important, particularly in my neck of the woods. If there is a better way to share data and improve forecasting, we should pursue it. That is why Conservatives will support the bill, but supporting the objective does not mean pretending the process that got us here made any sense. The legislation was here before, in the last Parliament, in fact, as Bill C-317. It received unanimous support in the House but then died when Parliament was prorogued. It came back in the current Parliament as Bill C-241. The sponsor came before the environment committee and told us that the bill was essential. She spoke about flooded homes, damaged infrastructure and the need for a national strategy. That is fair enough, but that immediately raised an obvious question to me: If the issue was so urgent, why had the government not acted already? I asked the sponsor that question directly. The previous bill had passed roughly 18 months earlier. The Minister of Environment did not need to wait for another private member’s bill to begin developing the strategy that is talked about in this legislation. The answer was that the sponsor could not speak to why the minister had not done it. The answer became even more interesting when departmental officials appeared. One of the officials told us that the government does not actually need any legislation to create this strategy. She said, “We don’t need a bill to create a strategy.” Think about that. The government already has the authority to do this. This issue is supposedly urgent. The minister could have gotten to work, but the government just decided to wait. Then the bill came back, and Liberal MPs decided it was still somewhat too ambitious of a bill. That is where it all gets very strange. The original bill required the strategy to assess modelling that would identify properties and infrastructure at risk from flooding, which is pretty specific. If somebody tells me they are developing flood modelling, it seems reasonable to ask where the water might go. The Liberals amended that language and replaced it with something much broader about modelling that would simply “support flood and drought forecasting”. I asked why they had done that. If the Liberals wanted broader language, why not add broader language? Why would they delete the specific requirement to identify homes, roads, infrastructure and properties at risk? Officials said that the broader language could capture more activities, which is fine, but the government seems to think that the less a law requires, the better designed it is. Sometimes specificity is useful. If my house is about to flood, I am less interested in learning that the government has developed a broad suite of flexible modelling capabilities than I am in knowing whether or not the water is about to reach my basement. Then we came to the most significant change with the amendment from the government. The original bill required the preparation of a proposal for a national flood and drought forecasting service built around federal and provincial co-operation. It would not be the creation of the service. It would not have billions of dollars tied to it. It would not be another department. It was merely a proposal. The Liberals decided that might be going a little too far, though, and their amendment inserted language about measures the Government of Canada “may take”. In legislation, as we all should know in this place, words such as “shall”, “must” and “may” are always there for a reason, and they mean different things. If Parliament intends something to happen, it generally does not write, “Government may possibly consider getting around to it if everyone still feels like it later, maybe.” The parliamentary secretary said he did not want to be too prescriptive. He wanted latitude. “Latitude” is a wonderful word in government. It usually means there will be plenty of room to avoid doing whatever Parliament thought it was asking for. I asked officials directly whether the new wording meant the minister was permitted to take these measures but was not actually required to. The answer was clear: The government would no longer be required to act once the government’s amendments were passed. The strategy would have to include possible measures, but it would not direct the minister or the government to do anything whatsoever after the government passed its amendments. Apparently, even a plan to make a plan was a bit too much commitment for the Liberals. I asked what the point of a national strategy is if national strategies do not actually direct government action. The answer was that the strategy would, to use the famous new buzzword, “catalyze” people and bring them together. Now, I am sure these meetings would be excellent. There might even be sandwiches at them. However, Canadians living in flood zones are looking for something slightly more useful. That is where an important difference became clear. Measuring water levels is not the same thing as predicting a flood. The national hydrometric program measures water levels and water flows. That is useful, but officials confirmed that it does not itself issue flood warnings. Provinces and territories take that data and turn it into warnings and alerts. I asked the obvious question. Collecting the measurement is not the same thing as producing the forecast. If a river gauge says that the water is rising, somebody still has to go and tell the mayor whether the road is expected to be underwater tomorrow. That difference is precisely why the original proposal for a co-operative forecasting service had some value and why Conservatives voted for it at second reading, yet that was the part the government decided to make optional. We have also heard a great deal about coordination. The Canada Water Agency exists in a federal government where more than 20 different departments and agencies already have some sort of freshwater responsibility. I asked what special authority or capability the new agency had that all these others did not. The answer came back largely to coordination, committees, agreements and funding programs. I asked why, if fragmentation was the problem, the solution was to create department 21. I asked what Canadians would notice if we did not have a Canada Water Agency tomorrow. There was nobody at the table that could give me a straight answer on that one. That is the broader lesson here. The government is very good at announcing coordination and plans. The Liberals’ favourite solution to a coordination problem is to create another layer of coordination to coordinate the coordinators. Eventually, somebody asks what actually changes with all this coordination. Better data matters, but data alone does not solve the problem. Writing a strategy is the easy part. Making sure it leads to better decisions is what counts; it is all that counts. That brings us back to the bill before us. There are still worthwhile things in it, despite the government’s amendments. Let us not pretend that the Liberals on the environment committee made this legislation better in any way. They did not. They made some of the clearest language less specific. They took one of the few tangible outcomes and made it conditional on the minister deciding that maybe they want to do it. What are we left with? The Liberals say floods and droughts are increasingly serious, and they are. When they had the bill in front of them, they apparently decided the biggest problem was that it asked the government to actually do something about it. However, when a community is flooding, Canadians do not need another strategy; they need action. It is time for action.