“Past Liberal laws blocked natural resource projects and stopped us from exporting our resources. Now the government says it wants to build projects and sell resources. Will the member admit that the government made big mistakes over the last ten years?”

“Mr. Speaker, this is an important debate. Members are studying a very lengthy piece of legislation. I want to ask the member about the messages the government is sending now, relative to messages the government has sent in the past. Under the Liberal government, there was the passage of Bill C-69 and C-48, which are government bills that really obstructed the development of anything in this country, certainly the export of natural resources. Now we hear the government at least saying some good things. It is saying that we should be selling our resources to the world and that we should be developing and building things. I wonder if the member will acknowledge there is some change. Is there some recognition that big mistakes were made in the last 10 years in this regard?”

“I want the member to explain how this bill would deal with strikes, like the recent ones at the port of Vancouver and on the railways.”

“Mr. Speaker, the member spoke a lot about the labour portion of this bill, which is part 3. We have seen, over the last couple of years, a lot of strikes at the port of Vancouver, as well as the rail companies. In the member’s opinion, how would this bill have handled or interacted with those strikes and those labour situations at the port of Vancouver and the rail strikes?”

“I oppose this bill. It makes promises to speed up projects, but it still lets the government delay decisions whenever it wants. The government is already holding up 500 projects with red tape. If we want to build things, we should cut taxes on natural resources and limit each project to one single review.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is with great joy and pleasure that I rise to take part in today’s debate on Bill C-39, introduced by the government. I am also very pleased to inform you that I will be sharing my time with the Conservative member for Tobique—Mactaquac. As Conservatives, we have one primary objective here in the House, and that is to save Canadians money. There are ways the government can do just that. For example, it could cut taxes or even eliminate them. What we have been proposing for months is to eliminate taxes on natural resources, such as oil, to speed up the process of getting projects built. That would leave Canadians with more money in their pockets. That is the quickest way of getting this done. Unfortunately, the Liberals are only partially implementing this idea. Another thing the government could do is get out of the way and let entrepreneurs and Canadians develop our natural resources to their full potential and create wealth in the process. Canada is the envy of the world because our country has every natural resource and every kind of energy. For the past 10 years, however, we have seen successive Liberal governments stop at nothing to keep Canada’s incredible natural resource and energy potential from being fully realized. No discussion of natural resources and energy can be considered complete unless it encompasses both sides. We cannot rely purely on traditional energy sources like fossil fuels or purely on green energy. We need a combination of both. Achieving that will take willingness, openness and most of all, an end to the contempt that Canadians have witnessed and experienced over the past 10 years. Successive Liberal governments have treated certain so-called “traditional” natural resources, such as gasoline and so on, with contempt. Let us not forget that a new government was elected in 2015. Prime Minister Trudeau said loud and proud that “Canada is back”. Some will recall that he was very proud to say that in Davos, and everyone applauded him. He was the new global star. That reminds me of certain things that are happening right now. The people in Davos were delighted to hear Prime Minister Trudeau say that the Canadian economy, and I am paraphrasing here, would no longer rely solely on what is beneath our feet, but also on what is between our ears. That was so disrespectful to Canadians, as if there had been nothing between people’s ears since Confederation, or even long before that. That was the essence of Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal policy: contempt for what lies beneath our feet, namely our energy resources and all the potential they represent. As we saw, regulations and laws were enacted that were truly intended to hinder economic development and undermine the potential of our natural resources. Examples include Bill C-48 and Bill C-69. I will come back to that a little later, because, unfortunately, nothing has changed. Some would have us believe that a new tone has been set in the past 18 months with the arrival of the new Prime Minister. We must tread lightly here. The current government deserves a global award for all their announcements, summits, ceremonies, statements and ribbon-cutting ceremonies. That is truly impressive, but where are the concrete results? During the election campaign, the Liberals were going on about Build Canada Homes. We had a good laugh at the time. Let me just say that the French title “bâtir Maisons Canada” sounded a bit like something out of the movie E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial. Where are these houses? Where were they built? What concrete results have Liberal policies produced over the past 18 months? There are none. I would remind members that one of the first bills the government tabled was Bill C‑5, whose objective—yes, I said “objective”—was to speed up the process of integrating practices. We, the Conservatives, did not oppose that approach. We even voted in favour of a closure motion so we could move forward. However, 18 months later, where are the concrete results? That is the issue. The Liberals put on a big show and make nice announcements, but there are no concrete results. The proof is that, at this very moment, the Prime Minister has a pile of documents on his desk. Some 500 projects are ready to move forward, and those projects are currently being held up. If the government truly intends to advance Canada’s economic development, it should green-light those 500 projects. While 500 projects await action on the Prime Minister’s desk, his government has created 14 new government agencies. Bill C‑69 and Bill C‑48 remain in effect. Our leader said something yesterday that is worth repeating because it goes to the heart of the matter. He quoted Bill C‑69 and said that anyone seeking to proceed with a project must still provide an analysis of “the intersection of sex and gender with other identity factors”, as if that had anything to do with mines, pipelines and seaports. We thought the Trudeau era was behind us, but it is still alive and well. These are left-wing policies. The Liberals go on and on about their lofty principles. Woke policies remain in place because of Bill C‑69 and Bill C‑48. That applies to something else, too. As mentioned yesterday, proponents must still consider “any other matter relevant to the impact assessment that the responsible authority requires to be taken into account”. The government wants to do it, wants to move forward, or at least that is what it is saying, but everything is open to all sorts of analyses. That is fine. We understand that. However, if we are talking about taking real action to reach our full potential, that is not what the government is doing. We have been debating the government’s Bill C-39 for the past two days. If we understood the government correctly, this bill seeks to do what the government has not done for 18 months, despite Bill C-5. That is basically what this is. I have to say that it is rather ridiculous how these people were boasting about how Bill C-5 was a new approach. Now, here we are, 18 months later, and they are introducing another bill that takes a very similar approach, when we have yet to see any results. That is proof that the Liberals did not do their job properly on this. We are talking about an omnibus bill that is nearly 250 pages long and contains hundreds and hundreds of provisions that we need to examine. Of course, as with all parliamentary work, the devil is in the details. We understand that there is a time limit. Earlier, I heard my colleague say that projects can begin after a one-year review period, but that is not the case because the government is giving itself the power to suspend that time limit at any time. Imagine a foreign investor who sees Canada’s immense potential and decides to take the plunge, thinking everything will work out. I wonder what will happen when that investor realizes that one very important detail will change once Bill C-39 is passed: The government will get the power to suspend this one-year time limit. That is not a good thing. Obviously, a good way to reduce delays is to require only one environmental assessment per project. Two years ago, on behalf of the official opposition party, I was extremely proud to introduce Bill C-375, which sought to do exactly that: have just one environmental assessment, not two, per project. We worked with the provinces to move the bill along. I even managed to get the Bloc Québécois members to support the principle and vote with us at second reading. Unfortunately, the Liberals and the NDP voted against the bill, so it died. It is no stretch of the imagination to assume that, if we had passed that bill two years ago, our actions would have worked proactively in Canada’s favour. In the Speech from the Throne given 18 months ago, the King himself repeated what I had said in the House, that one project requires just one assessment. The King said so himself in the Speech from the Throne, which is no small thing, yet 18 months later, things are still not moving, and the “one project, one review” principle has still not been implemented across Canada from coast to coast to coast. Our message to the government is that it should take some inspiration from what the Harper government did during the economic crisis we had to grapple with in 2008 and 2009. The process was streamlined. Every project had to be analyzed on a single page rather than pages and pages. It worked, because 23,500 projects were put forward under the Harper government. As Conservatives, we value efficiency. We want the government to be efficient and to take inspiration from what we did back then, not from the inaction of the past 18 months. Unfortunately, the government is slow to deliver any real results.”

“Two years ago, the member voted against my bill to simplify reviews for building projects. That wasted two years. The Liberals have blocked natural resource projects for 10 years, which is the only reason we need to rush these approvals now.”

“Mr. Speaker, I am very happy to see my colleague here in the House. Does the member remember where he was two years ago when he voted against my private member’s bill, Bill C-375, for one project, one evaluation? He voted against it, and that is on the record. We lost two years on that issue, and we lost more than 10 years because of the Liberal administration. Government after government was opposed to any development of our natural resources. Now we want to fast-track everything, for sure, but the reason we have to do that right now is that during the last 10 years, the government failed to achieve great things.”

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“Canadians want their government to work better and waste less money. The forestry sector is vital to Quebec and Canada, but the government is too slow to help it. We need to hold the government accountable for letting forestry workers down.”

“Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his very relevant comments. What Canadians want is to get more for their money and to have more money in their pockets. They also want the government to be more efficient. My colleague has just demonstrated very clearly that unfortunately, in a sector that is essential to Quebec’s economy and Canada’s economy, namely the forestry sector, the government is slow to use truly constructive solutions and approaches. It is never too late to do the right thing. Let us seize this opportunity to hold the government accountable and ensure it answers to us on this issue involving forestry workers.”

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“Governments do not create jobs. Businesses do. The government's job is to set rules that let businesses hire people. This bill does not fix the bad rules that stop companies from creating jobs.”

“Mr. Speaker, I want to get something on the record here. The member for Winnipeg North was talking about the government creating jobs. The problem in Canada right now is that it is actually not up to the government to create jobs. It is up to the private sector to create jobs. The government’s job is to create a regulatory environment that would allow the private sector to do that. This is the second bill that the government has tabled claiming to blow the doors off the Canadian economy, yet it has not done anything to substantively address the regulatory problems that are cited by industry regarding getting jobs created. Does my colleague have any thoughts on that?”

“I agree with my colleague. The best way to help the economy is for the government to get out of the way and let people develop our natural resources and energy.”

“Mr. Speaker, I deeply appreciate the question and the work done by my colleague. The member pointed out that the best way to help the economy is for the government to get out of the way. This is what we are asking for as the Conservative opposition to the government, for it to get out of the way and let people develop the full potential we have in natural resources and energy.”

“The government makes big announcements about building things but never gets anything built. Canadians need real jobs and lower living costs, not more empty promises. We should cut red tape, approve projects within six months, and scrap laws that stop energy and development projects.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is an absolute honour to rise in the people’s House again and speak to this important piece of legislation that the government has brought forth. I would like to begin by reflecting on an old story that I have referenced before but that certainly applies yet again here in the House. There was a father who had two sons, and he challenged them to go to work in his vineyard. He said, “I need you to go out and work on the farm. I have some big tasks ahead.” He commissioned them to go into the field. The first son rose enthusiastically and made a grand proclamation and a great announcement: “That’s a wonderful idea. I’m going to do that right away. You can count on me. I’m going to do that. You don’t have to worry one bit.” He made the grand proclamation, but he did not end up in the field. Then there was the second son who was approached, and he said, “I can’t go. I’m sorry to disappoint you. I can’t go.” However, he got to thinking about it and feeling bad, and he said to himself, “I owe this to my dad. I’m going to go out and work in the field like he asked me to do.” Basically, the conclusion to that story is to ask which son was more pleasing to the father, who had asked them to go out into the vineyard. Well, obviously, it was the second son. Even though his initial response was disappointing and did not rise to the occasion as was expected, the results were outstanding because he went and did what needed to be done and got the job done, whereas the other son made a grand announcement and a tremendous proclamation, got the hopes up of everyone around, sounded like things were going to be wonderful, but the end result was that he did nothing and was a grand disappointment. I cannot help but see the correlation. Once again, we are having grand proclamations and excellent announcements: “Don’t you worry. No matter what problem faces this country, you hang on. There will be another announcement within five minutes, and it will be okay.” People will look, and they will ask, “Where is the result?” The answer is, “Oh, don’t you worry. We’re going to come and make another announcement.” There is another announcement, and yet a few months go by, and Canadians wait for the results and do not see any. “But don’t you worry. There’s another proclamation on its way.” They come, and their hearts are filled with anticipation. Much like cotton candy, the announcement provides an instant sugar high and makes us feel good and warm and fuzzy, but then comes the crash of no results and limited outcomes. What Canadians are looking for is tangible results and real outcomes, and I could not help but think about that story as I was preparing my remarks today. Look, these are challenging times, and we all admit that. We want what is best for Canadians, and we want Canada to move forward because Canada is a nation of incredible potential and overwhelmingly abundant blessings that we have both under our feet on our lands and in our people. We need to unleash and unlock that potential so Canada can live up to that potential and our people can enjoy the benefits of all those bountiful blessings that we have been given. Therefore, I challenge the government today. With this grand announcement, I hope there is a firm commitment to deliver real results for real Canadians. They are tired of announcements and proclamations and grand theatre and great speeches on big stages. What they want to know is, will this deliver the potential for me to find real work, make a decent paycheque, be able to put groceries on my table, help us make the mortgage payment, keep the vehicle payments up, help our kids get through school and have them actually dream of maybe someday owning a home of their own? If we do not deliver that, we are not living up to our promise and to the expectation that has been made of us by Canadians. I have been reflecting on this and looking at some of the announcements that have been made, and it was not long ago that there was yet another grand announcement: “We are forming a special projects office.” That sounds great. I love it. Over 500 announcements have been made and placed under the jurisdiction of the special projects office. However, I have to ask the House, how many have been approved? It is zero. We have had 500 announcements, many designations and grand proclamations and yet again the disappointment of no real deliverables. The time for deliverables has come. The time for results has come. We have to get to a place where we are doing real things. The good news is that our party has put forward some real, tangible solutions for some of the challenges facing Canada’s industry, workers and people. We are calling for projects to be expedited and to be approved within six months. We are calling for the repeal of job-killing laws and antidevelopment laws, like Bill C-69 and Bill C-48, that impede Canada’s progress. We are also calling for a genuine one-project, one-review approach that would give proponents certainty instead of making them go through multiple layers of endless regulation and red tape. It is time to unlock our resources and unleash our potential, move beyond the announcement phase and get to the deliverables and results phase. We do that by streamlining. We do that by making sure that this gets done and does not turn into yet another grand announcement that gets our hopes up but does not deliver what Canadians need in this time of stress. We are fighting hard on this side of the House to save people and Canadians money, but also to have real projects and real jobs made available and done for Canadians. As we have seen, after a year and a half of announcements, we cannot point to concrete examples of things getting done. Nothing leads to more frustration than unmet expectations. When many expectations arise, when rhetoric soars in the moment and when we do not deliver on what we have promised to Canadians, they grow more suspect, more weary and more frustrated. Then they begin to look with a very jaundiced eye at anything that any parliamentarian or politician ever says. Why is that? It is because we have promised much and delivered little. We have to get to the place where we are delivering real, concrete results for Canadians, because this country has unbelievable, incredible potential. I want to conclude with one final analogy from an ancient story that came to me as I was preparing for today. It is a story of a lady who was in a desperate situation and did not know where to turn. She sought solutions from various places. She went to doctor after doctor and could find no help. In fact, she just got further diagnosed, with more diagnoses and more prognoses, and spent more of her hard-earned money, ending up with nothing left in her pocket while living with the consequences of false hopes and many broken promises. The good news is that this story did not end with her in a place of unmet expectation. The good news is that she pressed through the crowds and doubts, and she overcame the obstacles, as many Canadians are doing right now. She sought out a great physician and got her answer. Her answer came when she told her whole story. After she told her story and that great physician heard her story and gave her the answer, she went away whole. Canadians become whole when those who are elected to represent them take the time to hear their stories, and not just hear their stories, but take direct action to bring real solutions to their problems. It is time to get beyond the diagnoses in this country, get beyond the announcements, proclamations and false hopes, and deliver real results for real Canadians in real time.”

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“The government only announces resource projects instead of actually building them. For ten years, the Liberals opposed oil and gas development. Now they claim to support it, but they need to prove it by actually building pipelines.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is always good to have a debate with fellow Maritimers in the House. I will say this. Once again, the projects the member just listed are projects that have been announced but have not yet been delivered. We need real results to start kicking into place. Let us not blame Canadians for being somewhat skeptical when they hear more proclamations from the government. Let us remember that this is the same government that for 10 years called some of our most valuable resources dirty oil and dirty gas and said we should keep it in the ground. It also said that anyone who advocated for those resources and the development of those resources was a planet burner. I am glad the Liberals have experienced an absolute backflip and inverted suplex on themselves and are now embracing our policies, at least verbally. However, now we need proof of that change and transformation with real action, the real construction of pipelines, and real development.”

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“We need a government that gets real results for Canadians. Canada ranks last among peer countries for income per person. This government's policies have failed, hurting our industries, our workers, and the cost of living. It is time to pass this bill and get things done.”

“Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague from the beautiful province of Quebec. What we need now is a government that will actually do something. We need a government that gets real things done for Canadians. When we rank 38 out of 38 among OECD nations for GDP per capita, that is an indictment of the government’s policies, which have failed to deliver real results. Even though the pronouncements are grand, the results have been very much disastrous as it relates to competitiveness for our industries, for our workers and for affordability for Canadians from coast to coast. It is time to get results for them.”

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“I oppose this bill. It is far too long. The government keeps trying to pass new laws to fix its past mistakes, and I do not believe it will get things right this time.”

“Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for a tremendous speech. It is always a pleasure to listen to him in this House. He is very factual as well. That is what I really appreciate about what he has to say. He brings so much substance to what he says in the House. We can contrast that with the fact that we are dealing with a bill today that is thicker than most phone books we find in this country now. I really cannot believe it. This is not the first bill the government has tabled to try to fix 10 years of disastrous governance over there. It already has Bill C-5. This is another admission that that bill does not work. Are we going to be back here again debating another bill to undo more bad Liberal laws from the government? Are Canadians expected to believe that it is going to get things right this time?”

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“I agree with my colleague. The government needs to stop talking and start getting real results for farmers and resource workers.”

“Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague from Swift Current—Grasslands—Kindersley. What a great representative he is for his people in standing up for hard-working Canadians, farmers and resource workers. One expression comes to mind. There’s a song that has words that say that we need “a little less talk and a lot more action”. It is time for action now to get results for Canadians.”

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“This bill only treats extended rail switching as a temporary test in the Prairies. Shippers and grain growers want it to be permanent and nationwide. The government should listen to them and make this change permanent across the country.”

“Mr. Speaker, in his speech, my colleague talked about consultation, predictability and making hard decisions, but this is clearly the same old Liberal government. As part of this bill, for the third time, Liberals would be making extended interswitching just a pilot project. They have not been able to make the hard decisions of doing the right thing or they clearly have not consulted. Why would they not be making extended interswitching permanent? Why would they be limiting it to just the Prairies, avoiding or excluding critical grain corridors like B.C. and northern Ontario? Why are they not listening to shippers and grain growers and including interswitching as a permanent change to the transportation corridors in Canada?”

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“For ten years, the Liberals blocked major building projects in Canada. Now they suddenly support them. I want the Liberals to admit they changed their minds just to stay in power.”

“Mr. Speaker, for over a decade, the Liberals blocked, stalled and denied all kinds of projects across Canada that would have made us richer, more sovereign and less dependent on any other country. However, today, we are expected as Canadians to believe that the same people who filled Justin Trudeau’s caucus have suddenly turned a leaf and believe the opposite of what they have been saying for a decade. Will the Liberals admit they do not actually believe in anything and that every decision one Liberal makes is to keep another Liberal in power?”

“The government passed a similar bill 18 months ago, and nothing was built. I want the member to tell me which regulations and laws this new bill will actually get rid of.”

“Mr. Speaker, we had the Building Canada Act 18 months ago. Now we have the building Canada strong act. Nothing has been built or done in the interim. I cannot wait for when we have the “building Canada very strong act” 18 months from now. The key is repeal. Can the member tell me exactly which regulations and legislation this bill would repeal—”

“I do not support this bill. It just repeats old government promises in a 250-page package. The Liberals hurt our economy for ten years by blocking major energy projects. This bill does not explain who actually signs off on environmental approvals, and its one-year deadline breaks our legal duty to consult First Nations before making decisions.”

“Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Sudbury. We are here talking about Bill C-39. It is another announcement, another 250-page bill to talk about what we already announced last year, basically rewrapped in a more complicated bill. We are trying to talk about building Canada strong when we really should be talking about how to rebuild Canada strong, because we were a country that was growing before 10 years ago, when the Liberal government decided to stall and stifle our economy with Bill C-69 and Bill C-48. To undo the damage done by these bills and the stifling of the economy, all we are getting now is announcements, whether we are talking about the Major Projects Office or Bill C-39. I was an MLA and was a chief councillor back in the days of LNG development 20 years ago, so this is where I come from. More specifically, I come from the processes of how to get projects approved, whether we are talking about environmental assessments provincially in B.C. or federally in Canada, and the regulations that go underneath them. Parallel to that is the consultation accommodation that must happen with aboriginal peoples. It is great to see the conversation that we need an economy being so universal. After 10 years, we need an economy, but the government is not admitting that it did not like the economy growing. It did not like LNG development. It did not like LNG exports. In fact, it was the Liberal government that said that there was no business case for LNG development. It was this government that let Germany, when it came knocking on the door of Canada to secure an LNG deal, go away with a hydrogen deal. I travelled to Ottawa to try to fix the record based on my experience of project development, whether we are talking about forestry, mining or LNG. The government did not take my request for a meeting. A member of the opposition did, and all I was here to say was that they were talking to the wrong people. The federal government has no idea what it is talking about. There is a huge business case for LNG. There is a huge demand, and if someone wants proof, they should come talk to the first nation leaders in B.C. They are the ones who put together the LNG export plan. They are the ones who fought for it and lobbied for it. In fact, a lot of the leaders who fought for it did so with no praise or recognition, which is a shame. These are people like Elmer Derrick and the people of Nisga’a. The leadership at the time, who were supporting my band in getting LNG off the ground, never got recognition. Now LNG is pursuing its own LNG facility, but all of that was with all the opposition from the provincial government in B.C. and the federal government. I did everything I could to understand environmental assessments, regulations and case law, and the only thing I can say now is that I wish I knew then what I know now in terms of how this place operates. We could have gotten it done quicker. It is a shame that Canada is in the position it is in now as a weak country, just because of the ideology of saying “no” to LNG development and exports. There were 18 major LNG projects in B.C. at a time when we just got started. All of them left. One major project from my territory, the only one that survived, was LNG Canada, and there are some minor floating LNG projects. If there had been no opposition to development back then, we would not be here having this conversation. We would not be talking about affordability, jobs or our young people leaving the country. We would not be talking about the need to cut taxes, because the economy would have been keeping up. Unfortunately, the damage that has been done in 10 years has brought us to a place where the most we can do now is try to send signals to the world about announcements: Let us repack what we announced last year into a 250-page bill and call it Bill C-39. However, I am glad that at a high level, the opinion of the Liberal government seems to be changing. It is a Festivus miracle, but will that translate into something of substance? Right now, it is going to take some time to understand how this 250-page bill fits with the fast-track approval of a project, given that we already had an announcement of a Major Projects Office that was supposed to do the same thing. That buzz over the Major Projects Office is now a fizzle. Now, partially, Bill C-39 is talking about the existing powers of the Canadian Impact Assessment Agency and how it is going to be amended but also how some is going to be transferred over to the energy regulator and some might be fast-tracked to the Major Projects Office. I have just one fundamental question that the government cannot answer. At the end of the day, who signs the environmental assessment certificate? Is it going to be the regulator, the Major Projects Office or the Canadian Impact Assessment Agency? Whoever does it is going to take responsibility for that signature going forward. The government cannot answer that. How is industry supposed to have the certainty to invest in Canada if the legislation and regulations are all over the map? Corporations, and first nations for that matter, are going to have to hire lawyers and consultants to pore over these new bills to find out exactly what the process is. By the way, I heard a number of the government members talking about indigenous consultation. There is a contradiction in terms of what they are saying about consultative duties to first nations people affected by major projects. I am talking about that pre-decision, pre-approval, to approve it in one year, but the courts have said it cannot do that. When the Crown is aware of a decision that might affect rights and title, the government has to consult and accommodate first nations before it makes the decision. Hon. Kevin Lamoureux: Tell that to Pierre Poilievre. Ellis Ross: Shall I say it again? Before you make the decision, you must consult and accommodate, not after the fact, when you have made the decision. Your own policy says it. Read your policy on the Justice Canada site. It—”

“The government makes decisions first and only talks to First Nations later, which goes against the courts and its own rules. The Indian Act keeps First Nations from planning their own futures. The government should work with groups like the Canadian Institute of Planners to help communities plan for big projects.”

“Mr. Speaker, Canada’s own policy says that. Even though I am getting heckled by the parliamentary secretary to the government House leader, I am just reciting what Canada’s policy says. How is the government going to square that? I have seen what has been done in the B.C. treaty process. The government makes the decision and then promises to continue consulting and accommodating. That is not what the court case said. Interestingly enough, though, back in the day, as first nations, we could only dream of planning our future. We had no money and no resources, and we were under the Indian Act. We could not plan a future under the Indian Act. It is a very punitive system for first nations, so it was very hard to plan a future. There are entities out there now, though, and I think the government should seriously consider this, that could help, not with the process itself of environmental assessments, rights and title, but could help a region, town or first nation plan for the future in light of what might be major project development in Canada. Specifically, I am talking about the Canadian Institute of Planners. I know they are here lobbying the government and members of the opposition. I can see my past, my history, in what they are talking about. It partly relates to what I wish I knew then as opposed to what I know now. It could have made life a lot easier not only for my first nations people but for the surrounding area. At the end of the day, as a judge said back in the day, “Let’s face it, none of us are going anywhere. We’re all in this together.””

“The rules for approving big projects are too confusing. Too many different offices are involved, and this bill makes it worse. We cannot build anything if investors, First Nations, and Canadians cannot understand the process.”

“Mr. Speaker, I thank the member for his confusion because I am confused as well. I know the existing process under the Canadian Impact Assessment Agency, but I do not understand the correlation to the Major Projects Office, and now we have a new bill that talks about a regulator being in charge. As far as I can see, it is a three-ring circus. If people do not understand the process, which should be a clear-cut process for investors, first nations and Canadians, then how are we going to build Canada strong? I understand your confusion.”

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“Workers build Canada, and this issue is too important to leave as it is. I want the government to send this bill to a committee so we can study it.”

“Mr. Speaker, that is great question, and it is an important issue. I mean, the labour is what actually builds Canada. It provides the jobs, the contracts and the subcontracts. Those are the people who build the bridges, the buildings and the LNG plants. Really, this issue is so important that it has to go to committee. It cannot just stay the way it is. That is what committees were built for, and that is what I will be hoping the government does: send this issue to committee.”

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“The Liberal government has stopped resource projects for over ten years. We helped pass their last bill to fix this, but nothing was built. Now they have introduced this new bill, which proves their past plans failed to develop our country. I want to know if the member agrees.”

“Mr. Speaker, I wonder if my colleague from Skeena—Bulkley Valley would agree with the following statement. The presentation in this chamber of Bill C-39 is actually a proof point, in the same manner that Bill C-5 was a proof point. What do I mean? Well, Bill C-5 is a proof point that 10 or 11 years of Liberal government has basically stifled resource development in this country, so the government needed Bill C-5. We supported it, fast-tracked it through, and now, after 18 months and 500 projects, absolutely zero has been done. Now the government has added a word, calling it “building Canada strong”, and here we are with Bill C-39. Would the member agree that it is a proof point that neither 10 years of previous policy nor the issuance of Bill C-5 has developed this country at all?”