Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, I rise this afternoon to speak to Bill C-264, and I will say at the outset what the central problem with this bill is. It is a one-line proposition dressed up as serious policy. It is a slogan in legislative form. It asks this Parliament to do something that the legislative record, the scientific record, the consultation record and the conservation record of this country have all decided against repeatedly over 50 years under prime ministers of every party. Perhaps we should take a walk down memory lane and look at history. In 1972, the House passed a resolution declaring that “the movement of oil by tanker along the coast of British Columbia...is inimical to Canadian interests”. It said “inimical”. That was the language of this Parliament in 1972. In 1985, a Conservative prime minister named Brian Mulroney established a voluntary tanker exclusion zone along the north coast of British Columbia. It was a Tory prime minister, a Tory cabinet and a Tory decision, and a good one at that. In 1988, that exclusion zone was formalized through coordination between the Canadian Coast Guard, the United States Coast Guard and the Reagan administration. A Conservative government and a Republican government worked together to protect the environment, imagine that. Now a Conservative opposition in Ottawa is working to undo exactly that. Let us think back to 1989. The Exxon Valdez ran aground in Prince William Sound. Thousands of kilometres of coastline were contaminated. A herring fishery collapsed and is still not yet fully recovered. Marine ecosystems were damaged in ways that are still being studied today. That disaster reinforced what Canadian governments had already concluded: The risk on that coast is unique, and the consequences of failure are too great. Members from British Columbia, particularly, are concerned about this. While I appreciate the concern for the environment from our members from Alberta, this is a particular problem that affects British Columbia, but it should affect the sensibility of all Canadians. For 34 years, this voluntary moratorium held, through four Conservative prime ministers and four Liberal prime ministers. None of them moved to repeal it, and none of them tried. In 2017, our government introduced Bill C-48, the Oil Tanker Moratorium Act, to give that 34-year consensus the force of statute. It passed the House with support from members of four of five parties represented. That is the history, and that is what this slogan, or this bill, proposes to overturn. The members opposite are not making a science-based case for repeal. They are not bringing forward new evidence about the risk on the north coast. They are not presenting a new technology or a new spill response capacity that changes that calculus. They are not pointing to a change in the vulnerability of that coast. They are bringing forward a one-line bill, with no consultation, no indigenous engagement and no environmental review, that asks Parliament to undo half a century of careful policy because it might look good in a social media clip. I want to make a point that I think the members opposite have not fully thought through, and I say this in the spirit of genuine concern for the credibility of debate in this institution. If the members opposite truly believe that a pipeline to the north coast of British Columbia is the future of Canadian energy, passage of this bill would be the worst possible way to pursue that future. The moment that this bill comes to a vote, it would galvanize every coastal first nation, every B.C. municipality, every environmental organization, every one of us who is concerned about the environment and every legal team in the country who has spent decades preparing for exactly this fight. It would guarantee injunctions. It would guarantee litigation. It would guarantee gridlock. If I were being cynical about it, I might encourage members opposite to proceed and encourage us to vote for it, to tie that up in the courts. Passing this bill would be the single most effective way to ensure that no pipeline ever gets built to the north coast of British Columbia, because the legal and political response that this bill on its own would trigger would be exactly that. That is not how to build big things in this country. That is how to make sure they never get built, and the proof of that is the years of Conservative government when not a single pipeline was built and no progress was made in protecting the environment, all at once. It was quite remarkable. Let us talk about the substantive case for why this moratorium should stand. First is the nature of the coast itself. The waters from the northern tip of Vancouver Island to the Alaska border are some of the most biologically productive seas on the planet, habitat for over 25 species of marine animals and spawning grounds for salmon runs that sustain ecosystems. This is not any ordinary coastline. The second is the nature of that risk. Crude oil tankers are vessels carrying volumes of persistent oil that, in the event of a failure, cannot be cleaned up. A herring fishery collapsed after the Exxon Valdez, and as I said earlier, it has still not recovered. The Nathan E. Stewart tug ran aground near Bella Bella in 2016. There was a diesel spill, and the Heiltsuk Nation is still measuring the consequences of that a decade later. The third is the obligation to coastal first nations, something that seems like an inconvenience to members opposite. The Coastal First Nations alliance has made its position clear, repeatedly, for decades. They are rights holders whose constitutional position is at the centre of it. Those nations have spoken loud and clear, and I would encourage members opposite to speak to them directly to hear their voices. The fourth pillar is, of course, the alternatives. There is already a pipeline to tidewater in this country, TMX. Expanded and operational, it is moving Canadian energy to global markets through the port of Vancouver, where the safety architecture, the spill response capacity, the marine traffic management and the indigenous consultation frameworks are all built around that infrastructure. Canadian energy has access to the Pacific. It has access to the markets that it needs to be going to, and we are working hard to ensure that, in the cleanest, greenest way possible, we continue to make that possible under the right conditions. It does not need access at the cost of a coastline that this Parliament, 50 years ago, declared inimical to Canadian interests to put at risk. Unless every single box is checked and all of the criteria are met to the satisfaction of all parties involved, there is no reason for a new pipeline to go through the north coast. If the science has changed, if science tells us something different and if indigenous consultations tell us something different, then we should all be having that conversation, but a one-line bill that proposes to change history just because it would look good is not how serious governments should make decisions. This is a government that believes in evidence. It is a government that believes in science. This is a government that believes in building a strong economy and protecting a healthy future for our environment. We believe these are not opposites. Quite the opposite, in fact, we believe they are part of the same future. We have demonstrated that. We have ensured Trans Mountain's viability. We signed a Canada-Alberta memorandum of understanding, which put a $130-per-tonne price floor under industrial carbon pricing in Alberta. We have secured an agreement in principle for a 75% reduction in methane emissions from Alberta's oil and gas sector by 2035. We have launched a joint electricity working group with Alberta to build a net-zero grid by 2050, including transmission interties that will finally allow British Columbia to export clean hydroelectric power eastward. Let us also look at the facts. From 2014 to 2025, bitumen production in this country grew by 63%. Alberta's royalties from 2021 to 2025 totalled $58 billion, nearly four times what they were in the previous seven years combined. At the same time as this happened, under a Liberal government, we were also able to preserve and protect 6,700 square kilometres on the north coast of British Columbia, larger than the size of P.E.I., in a nature reserve. That is how intelligent, managed, evidence-based energy policy works. It looks like signing an MOU. It looks like pricing carbon, cutting methane, respecting indigenous rights and our natural environment, and protecting our coast. It looks like building big things and protecting what no amount of private sector intervention can replace. What it does not look like is a one-line bill repealing 50 years of conservation policy because it polls well in a fundraising email for Conservatives. We owe Canadians better than that. We owe the next generation better than that. My son is in the lobby watching this speech today. I owe him better than that. We all do. We owe the coastal communities of British Columbia better than that. The case for repeal has not been made. I will be voting against Bill C-264. I urge every member of the House who has a conscience, who cares about the coastline of British Columbia and who cares about our environmental future and about building a prosperous economy to do the same.
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