Building Canada Strong Act

Bill C-39, Building Canada Strong Act · Second reading · now at committee in the House Where it stands

What Bill C-39 would do

The bill would set one-year deadlines for impact assessments of major energy projects, including pipelines, power lines, and offshore renewables, once required information is submitted. It would also allow the federal government to designate trade corridors, adjust port governance and rail switching rules, and let electronic documents replace paper records for trade. In addition, the bill would introduce new collective bargaining rules and timelines under the Canada Labour Code, along with changes to environmental reviews and fisheries offsetting fees.

Official text (opens in a new tab)

71 statements

Kevin Lamoureux, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons

Liberal
“Our bill adds safeguards for more accountability and transparency. The NDP government in Manitoba forced 350 health care workers back to work. I want the member to say if he holds his own party to the same standards he is asking of us.”
Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I am wondering if the member would apply the very same principles he just spoke about to the Province of Manitoba, in which one minister went to the Manitoba Labour Board and forced 350 health care workers back to work. The member knows that it was Wab Kinew’s New Democratic government. The changes being made to section 107 would put in safeguards to ensure more accountability and more transparency. However, as one of my colleagues talked about, it is easy to get a quick social clip that spreads misinformation. Can the member provide his thoughts, on principle, in terms of what the Manitoba government has done with the health care workers?

Natilien Joseph, Longueuil—Saint-Hubert

Liberal
“I want to ask the member if he truly believes any Canadian government would take away the right to strike.”
Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I understand that my colleague has had a long day and that he may be tired at this hour, but I would like to ask him this question: Does he really think that the right to strike in Canada will be suppressed by any government?

Kent MacDonald, Cardigan

Liberal
“I support this bill. It speeds up federal reviews so major projects can be approved within one year, without weakening environmental or Indigenous protections. This will help us build ports, ferries, and other trade routes faster, which is vital for Atlantic Canada.”
Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I rise today to speak to Bill C-39, the building Canada strong act. We find ourselves living in an extraordinary time of global transformation. We are witnessing unprecedented shifts in global trade patterns, rapid advancements in technology and heightened geopolitical uncertainty. The agreed-upon ways of doing business are being challenged across the globe every single day. It is clear that, as the world changes rapidly around us, we must look to our own domestic strengths to ensure that our supply chains are resilient, our infrastructure is strong and our economy is built to last. We cannot afford to passively observe global trends. We must take a hard look at how we build, approve projects and connect our communities to the world. This legislation does exactly that and provides our local communities, industries and workers with the certainty and predictability they need. This step forward is made possible by the coordinated leadership of our government leads on this bill. Under their direction, Bill C-39 builds directly upon the foundation laid out with the One Canadian Economy Act and the successes of the Major Projects Office. Our government’s commitment is one project, one review, one year. Islanders and Atlantic Canadians know the value of time. On P.E.I., our construction seasons are short. Our local businesses cannot always afford to feel trapped as they wait for a decision they fear may not come. Anyone who has spent a winter in Atlantic Canada knows that our window for breaking ground and completing major physical infrastructure projects is narrow. When a project decision is delayed by weeks or months, it means losing valuable productivity for communities. That kind of delay is costly and frustrating. Investors need to know that when they commit capital to a major project, they will receive an answer in a timely fashion. If Canada is going to attract the investment needed to build energy projects, do modern manufacturing and expand transportation hubs, we must prove that we can be nimble. Bill C-39 establishes clear timelines for federal project decisions and adjusts regulator timelines to better suit these needs. It moves federal approval processes to a concurrent review system and away from the slower sequential format of the past. This bill removes departmental silos and ensures that multiple bodies are looking at the same project at the same time. In the riding of Cardigan, this means that updates to our critical infrastructure, such as our small craft harbours and our energy grid capacity and expansion, can move forward without undue delay, all while retaining our strong protections. Accelerating our timelines does not mean compromising our values. This legislation explicitly ensures that we continue protecting our environment while safeguarding and respecting indigenous rights every step of the way. High administrative standards do not demand slow decisions. We have proven that environmental stewardship and economic momentum go hand in hand. P.E.I. relies on our ability to move goods efficiently. From the quality P.E.I. potatoes grown by our farmers to the world-class seafood harvested by our fishers, P.E.I. is ready to feed the world, but a strong product is only as good as the trade corridor that carries it to market. If our regional transport networks are outdated, our local producers lose out on opportunities. For an island province, those connections are especially important. We have the Confederation Bridge that was built in 1997 as a vital economic link connecting Prince Edward Island to New Brunswick, the rest of Canada and the markets beyond. The same is true of the Wood Islands to Caribou ferry, which is in my riding of Cardigan. That crossing connects eastern Prince Edward Island directly with Nova Scotia and forms an important part of the transportation network that supports our communities, our tourism sector and the movement of goods throughout our region. Our trade network does not end when goods leave Prince Edward Island. Atlantic Canada succeeds when the entire region is connected. Infrastructure in Halifax, including the grain handling and port facilities, helps connect Atlantic Canadian producers to international markets. If we are going to achieve a doubling of our exports to countries other than the U.S., we need this valuable infrastructure and these improvements to go ahead. Our bridges, our ferries, our highways, our railways and our ports are all links in the supply chain. That is why strengthening Canada’s trade corridors matters so much to Atlantic Canada. When one link in that chain is strengthened, our entire region becomes more competitive. When one link becomes a bottleneck, the effects can be felt by businesses and producers hundreds of kilometres away. The building Canada strong act would modernize the governance of Canada’s ports, its railways and its supply networks. This bill would help ensure that the hard work of Islanders and the hard work of Canadians can reach global markets reliably. We would strengthen our local economies by building a robust national network. When we fortify trade corridors across this country, we are building an economy where geographic isolation is no longer a barrier to success. We cannot build a prosperous future using outdated processes. The tools of the past are not equipped to solve the problems of the future. This act would provide clarity, give our industries the modern trade corridors they require and give Canadians a strong, unified economy they could depend on. It represents a step towards a more competitive and resilient Canada and it tells Canadians that their federal government is focused on the everyday realities that keep Canada moving forward. For those reasons, I am supporting this bill.

Kent MacDonald, Cardigan

Liberal
“Our government is committed to expanding ports in Churchill and Vancouver. This will help farmers ship their grain to market during the fall harvest. We need approval processes that let these port projects move forward.”
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Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, the member would be fully aware that this government is committed to port development, whether it is in Churchill, Manitoba, or in Vancouver. There is a large expansion being discussed. That would alleviate a lot of the struggles with the export of grain, particularly in the fall. We speak to ranchers in western Canada, and obviously it is the same everywhere. We all harvest in a certain window and that product all has to go to market, so we are going in the right direction in terms of port development. We need the processes to allow these expansions to happen.

Kent MacDonald, Cardigan

Liberal
“I support this bill. It gives businesses certainty and helps workers and bosses work together better. It makes them start talking earlier, so they have more time to solve problems and make deals before a strike or lockout happens.”
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Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I disagree with the member’s statement. What this bill would do is give certainty to industry. The act would take concrete steps to strengthen labour relations by requiring earlier bargaining in complex cases. It would gives unions and employers more time to identify issues, access mediation services and reach negotiated agreements before a strike or a lockout. The bill would develop the guardrails that give security to those labour relations.

Sean Casey, Charlottetown

Liberal
“I want to ask my colleague two questions. How does this bill help the ferry between Wood Islands and Nova Scotia? And how does it help dairy farmers?”
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Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the speech this evening by my colleague from the riding just directly across the Hillsborough River from Charlottetown. I want to ask him a couple of questions that are directly related to his own experience before coming to Parliament, and also something that is critical for his riding. Where does he see the opportunities in this legislation with respect to that critical transportation link between Wood Islands and Caribou, Nova Scotia? Second, based on his decades of experience in the dairy farming industry, where are the opportunities presented by this legislation in that industry?

Kent MacDonald, Cardigan

Liberal
“Prince Edward Island needs good ferry service to export its potatoes, fish, and other goods. This bill gives dairy processors the certainty they need to expand. That way, we can process our milk in Atlantic Canada instead of trucking it to Ontario and Quebec.”
Official Hansard

Mr. Speaker, I would say first, with regard to the transportation links, obviously, in the region of the province and country that I am from, we have a ferry service that is essential to commercial business and the export of potatoes, fish and many other commodities that leave P.E.I. We are a province of 180,000, and P.E.I. has been called the million-acre farm. What we grow, we have to export. That has to go to international markets and markets in the rest of Canada. In terms of the question about the dairy industry, I see this bill offering more certainty to the processing sector to build expansion. We are currently trucking milk to Ontario and Quebec that could be processed in Atlantic Canada. I think we need certainty in the business world to accomplish that.

Steeve Lavoie, Beauport—Limoilou

Liberal
“I want the member to vote for this bill. It will help projects move faster and give Canadian businesses, like farmers shipping their goods, more certainty.”
Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, I come from a dairy farm. It seems my colleague is a farmer as well, so I understand the realities he faces. He spoke about the port of Vancouver. We also have a port in Quebec City, and I understand the important role it plays in our trade strategy. At the Standing Committee on International Trade, we often heard about the port of Vancouver and the difficulties pork producers faced in shipping their products abroad because of the lack of predictability and certainty. I am pleased to hear his remarks because, based on what we see in Bill C‑39, we will be able to move projects forward more quickly and provide greater predictability for businesses. I therefore trust that he will support Bill C‑39 and vote in favour of providing greater predictability for businesses across Canada.

Corey Hogan, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources

Liberal
“I want the House to pass this bill. It will speed up government reviews for major building projects so decisions are made within one year. It cuts delays without lowering our environmental rules or ignoring Indigenous rights.”
Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, it is my pleasure to rise in support of the proposed building Canada strong act. I was next to the Prime Minister when, in my home city of Calgary last spring, he announced our party’s intention to speed up approval timelines while maintaining the robust environmental and social standards of which Canada is rightly proud. He talked about needing political decisions to come at the start of the regulatory process rather than lurking out there as question marks until the very end. He talked about departments working through reviews concurrently and getting promptly to a yes or a no. He talked about certainty and clarity for businesses, workers, communities, indigenous partners and governments. He talked about pragmatism. The Prime Minister’s stated aim, then as now, is to make Canada the best-performing country among the 38 members of the OECD, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. At the time, that meant reducing approval timelines to two years. However, the world will not wait for us. We have learned valuable lessons from the work of the Major Projects Office, for example. As Wayne Gretzky famously said, we must skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been. We must continue to push ourselves. We must uphold the standards and ambitions that define us as Canadians, while acting quickly enough to attract investment, both from here and abroad. By doing so, we are contributing to our country’s success. We are supporting good jobs, we are supporting strong communities, we are diversifying our trade and we are fostering the development of our industries here in Canada. It would be one project, one decision and one year. If we do this right, and we will, we would set the conditions for a generation of smart prosperity. The bill would find faster and better ways to reach the same objectives. We want to continue being a world leader in environmental and social standards, and we must continue to respect treaty rights and advance economic reconciliation, but we know we can do those things faster and better. In any large organization, decisions inevitably accumulate over time. A rule is created in response to a new technology. A new rule is introduced to address an emerging technology. A court decision changes an established process. An event alters our understanding of an issue or exposes a weakness that we move quickly to correct. A new manager introduces a new approach, which is layered onto existing practices. It goes on like that, often for years. Viewed individually, each decision makes sense. It meets a need. It is appropriate. However, we do not always take the time to assess the cumulative effect of all these decisions. Processes can become complicated, frustrating and slow, sometimes even redundant and counterproductive. Let us consider the expansion of consultation, which is a very good thing, and how it has intersected with our current system of reviews that occur one after the other: CER reviews, then DFO reviews, then ECCC reviews, and so on through all of the relevant departments, and at each step, a consultation occurs. While a billion-dollar company may be equipped to do four or five consultations, a concerned father of three, a first nation of 300 people or a rural municipality with a yearly budget of $10 million might not be. Consultation fatigue sets in and consultation quality suffers. Participants in early stages do not benefit from understanding the accumulated benefits and impacts that are only apparent when all the reviews have occurred. We can all agree, I am sure, that a better approach is to have all stakeholders at the table and all considerations on the table, to respect everyone’s time and capacity. That is better, and that is also faster. This bill would also create regions of national interest. If we know that a region is important for critical minerals, clean energy, transportation or any other priority, regional planning allows us to look at the whole picture. That includes cumulative environmental impacts, indigenous peoples’ rights and consultations, infrastructure needs, and areas where development should or should not take place. This way, we can establish common conditions, rather than starting the federal process from scratch for each new project. More planning up front means less duplication down the road. Regional planning is not a new idea. Municipalities and provinces are doing it. As in those cases, regions of national interest provide clearer rules and greater certainty for investors. They also make it possible to better coordinate projects and have a coherent strategy. Imagine, for example, several mines using the same regional roads and power lines. That infrastructure would have already been considered for expansion in the planning process. Once again, it is a better approach and, once again, it is a faster one. All Canadians want faster and better, but those who are considering investing billions have additional considerations and weigh projects against projects all over the world. Companies base investments on two criteria: return and risk. Faster decisions get projects to production sooner and in doing so increase return, and when they build in a Canadian way, they put Canadians to work. They strengthen our economy, they strengthen our communities and they strengthen economic reconciliation. Faster decisions also reduce risk. They mean we are not foregoing opportunities and investing for years with no guarantee of return at all. Through shaping our policies, we can further reduce risk. The proposed building Canada strong act would move political reviews by cabinet from the end of the process to the start of the process, and in doing so, it would give companies the confidence that they will have political support if they can meet the regulatory rules. This is better, it attracts capital and it costs nothing. It simply moves one gate from the end of a process to the start. It would reduce no standard and would lessen no protection. This bill contains many such amendments: thoughtful, practical and, in some cases, fairly self-evident. They are highly concrete measures, such as extending certain permits, starting negotiations earlier, making greater use of mediation and assigning primary responsibility to the department that already possesses the relevant expertise. These are practical solutions to specific problems. All of these provisions, along with many others I have not discussed, pursue the same objective: improving our processes in practical ways while maintaining the high standards Canadians expect. This is a well-designed, comprehensive bill that is targeted at the specific barriers holding back investment and growth, at a time when the world sees extraordinary opportunities in Canada. I have a final thought. As a country, we are doing big things. The bill would support doing big things. We have transportation goals and electrification goals. We have trade diversification goals. Our ambition is to be a conventional energy superpower and a renewable energy superpower. Our ambition is to maintain our global lead in mining, nuclear, forestry and so much more. I am aware of a study that shows that since 2006, federal regulatory burden has increased slowly but steadily. Through the Harper years and the Trudeau years, there was an unbroken increase to 37%. To be clear, it did not increase senselessly. It increased in response to events, challenges, evolved understandings and opportunities. It served a purpose. However, in aggregate, this increase is estimated to have lowered GDP growth by 1.7 percentage points and employment growth by 1.3 percentage points in the business sector. We have created another opportunity now, one I hope all members of the House embrace. A rationalization of our processes and regulations is a healthy process any organization should do regularly. The proposed building Canada strong act is that rationalization for the federal government. It would let us build faster, build better and do that while maintaining and promoting the values that we hold dear as Canadians.

Corey Hogan, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources

Liberal
“Transportation and linear projects have different challenges than other projects. I want the committee to study this issue and see if we can address the member's concerns.”
Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, I think the member opposite will also appreciate that there are different considerations, both in transportation because of the nature and the concentration that exists, and also in linear infrastructure and the challenges that are presented there as well. I certainly welcome the member’s comments, and I hope that at committee we can flesh this out. Perhaps there are opportunities to meet his concerns as we advance on this.

Corey Hogan, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources

Liberal
“This bill does not give projects final approval before reviews are done. It only promises approval if a project meets every safety and environmental rule at the end. This removes political uncertainty.”
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Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, I want to be precise, so I will respond in my mother tongue. It is a question of where we put a political approval. It is not saying that we have purchased the car. In fact, it is saying that we will purchase the car if it looks like it did in the advertisement. What we see with this particular approach is that we would be removing the uncertainty that comes from politics but saying that approval would be conditional upon all the other regulatory approvals’ being met by the decision document at the end of the process.

Karim Bardeesy, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Industry

Liberal
“I want the member to explain how this bill makes things fairer for smaller groups taking part in review processes.”
Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, I appreciate my colleague’s speech and his reflections, in particular, on the different capacities that organizations, large versus small, may have in participating in some of the review processes. I wonder if he could elaborate on how the bill would help level the playing field a bit.

Corey Hogan, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources

Liberal
“I support this bill. Right now, communities often face five or six separate government consultations for one project. This bill combines them into a single meeting to save people time and make discussions better.”
Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, I am very happy to. I think we can all appreciate, as we have grown in understanding about the complexity of projects, the impact on the environment and the impact on communities, that more federal departments have been brought into the conversation. Those conversations have become more robust. The challenge, however, has become that our organization as a government has presented additional stacking of consultations and demand on the communities that we are hoping to support through these initiatives. What Bill C-39 would do is bring all that to one table and allow a robust conversation to occur that would take into consideration all the benefits, all the drawbacks, all the challenges and all the opportunities, and do so in a way that would be much more respectful of time. There are many horror stories of people having to be subjected to five or six consultations. Let us get it down to one and make it a better one.

Corey Hogan, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources

Liberal
“This bill will give farmers and shippers more certainty. The rail rules are temporary for now so we can test them and build a stable system. I look forward to the member's ideas at the committee stage.”
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Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, I certainly believe it would increase certainty within all those sectors. What I would put back to my colleague is that, just as under Harper and just as under Trudeau, these rules would be provisional. There are challenges we want to work through in the longer term, and we want to make sure we can get to a transportation sector that is stable and well working. I certainly welcome the member’s additional commentary at the committee stage.

Kevin Lamoureux, Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Government in the House of Commons

Liberal
“Canadians are worried about trade, tariffs, and Donald Trump. Canada needs to work together as a team on this. The member opposite went to the United States and said Canada should stop having a hissy fit. I want him to explain those remarks and apologize to Canadians.”
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Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, since the last federal election, which was about 18 months ago, Canadians have been genuinely concerned about Trump, trade and tariffs. They have been on the front burner virtually from day one, and Canada needs to be able to adjust as we build a team Canada approach that involves many different stakeholders, led by the Prime Minister. The member opposite went down to the United States, and he had a meeting that upset a lot of Canadians. He told Canadians, as a mouthpiece, many would suggest, of President Trump, that we needed to stop having a “hissy fit”. I am wondering if the member would take this opportunity to provide clarity on that and apologize to Canadians for making that statement on behalf of President Trump.

Dominique O'Rourke, Guelph

Liberal
“I want the House to pass this bill. It will speed up government reviews for major building and trade projects to just one year by doing different reviews at the same time. It helps our economy during trade disputes without lowering environmental standards or hurting Indigenous rights. It also protects workers, adds health and safety inspectors, and helps businesses ship their goods faster.”
  • A repeated line

    “Changes to the Canada Labour Code will strengthen collective bargaining by helping parties address issues earlier, reach negotiated agreements and resolve disputes, while fully protecting the right to strike.”

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Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, this is my first time speaking to legislation since we came back in the fall, so I would like to take the opportunity to welcome the pages, who are from all over the country, to this House. They are in for a spectacular year. I myself sat where they are in 1991, but do not do the math. We congratulate the pages. What an honour this is and what a full-circle moment it is to welcome the pages and to be here speaking to legislation that is transformative in this country. I also want to thank everyone in Guelph for the conversations, meetings, site tours and community events over the summer. It is a real honour to represent Guelph in this House. As we approach Thanksgiving, I am so grateful for the privilege, the responsibility and the honour of serving my community and this great country at this historic time. Guelph is the fourth-largest exporter to the U.S. per capita. This means we engineer, we make things and we ship things primarily by road and rail. Did members know that the city of Guelph is one of the few municipalities that owns a railway? In the 1880s, businesses in Guelph were frustrated with the freight rates and service provided by the Grand Trunk Railway, which held a monopoly on rail transport in the city, so local merchants and civic leaders decided to build their own. They believed competition was essential for economic growth, and they created the Guelph Junction Railway to connect Guelph to the growing Canadian Pacific Railway network, providing local industries with an alternative route to markets across Canada. Now, 142 years later, the GJR owns approximately 38 kilometres of track. It connects with both Canadian Pacific Kansas City and the CN network, serving local manufacturers and industries. As Guelph heads into our bicentennial year, I want to celebrate those early industrialists and civic leaders who I think would agree with the building canada strong act. They wanted to give themselves more certainty. They built a stronger, more resilient and more independent economy. Everyone in Guelph I have met and have been working with for the past 18 months, including some of the largest employers in advanced manufacturing, agri-food, clean tech, packaged goods and consumer products, wants predictability and certainty. I heard this all the time when I was on city council. Of course, it is at a micro level, but people will tell us that they want faster processes, because sequential approvals and multiple reviews, and sometimes a change in municipal or provincial government, can derail a project. It definitely increases costs. It can delay a store opening. It can threaten the viability of an entire project. A lot of money and time can be spent in this churn that is not productive, and it is magnified when multiple jurisdictions are involved. This is what Bill C-39 seeks to address. We are in a trade war with our largest trading partner, which is something the opposition has sought to minimize repeatedly. We did not ask for it. We do not deserve it. It is illegal and it is unjustified, yet here we are. We will not be complacent. We will have our own plans. We cannot control what other countries do, but we can take down our interprovincial trade barriers, which the federal government has done and provinces are working on. We can control our own processes and regulations at home to get big things built, people working and goods to our own projects and to an expanding list of international markets. We can make sure federal reviews and decisions are completed within one year of a proponent submitting a completed comprehensive application, while upholding Canada’s rigorous environmental standards and respecting indigenous rights. We can and we must do so. How? It is by removing duplication and conducting reviews and consultations concurrently rather than sequentially. We can accelerate these processes. In fact, already since December 2025, Canada has achieved co-operation agreements with seven provinces to advance a one-project, one-review framework to reduce existing duplication between federal and provincial assessments. To be clear, the building canada strong act would make no changes to federal environmental standards. It would be a change in process. All factors would still need to be taken into consideration, including climate impacts, species at risk, ecological and nature implications, and more. I know this is really important to folks in Guelph. Let us remember that major projects, like electrification, massive hydro and wind projects, and critical mineral extraction and processing, also support our climate goals. They support Guelph businesses like Hammond Power, which makes the transformers that keep our industries humming and is key to cleaner energy and transportation, and Hitachi Construction Truck Manufacturing, which makes a partly electrified 150-tonne rigid-frame mining truck using Hamilton steel and manufactured in Canada by highly skilled workers. Canada’s new government has set an ambitious vision of major projects, electrification, nuclear, a defence industrial strategy, homebuilding and massive investments in infrastructure. Who is going to build all this? Who is going to fabricate the steel we need, make the moulds and build the ports, roads and towers? Canadian workers are. This government is so invested in our skilled tradespeople that we are investing $6 billion in the team Canada strong initiative. Working with unions, we have set a goal to recruit, train and hire 80,000 to 100,000 new Red Seal trades by 2031 and to support them financially along the way. We are a government that believes in labour, and we consulted with labour on this bill. Bill C-39 would modernize the federal labour framework and strengthen protection for workers in federally regulated industries. Changes to the Canada Labour Code will strengthen collective bargaining by helping parties address issues earlier, reach negotiated agreements and resolve disputes, while fully protecting the right to strike. Section 107 has been in the Canadian Labour Code for nearly 50 years. This bill would create guardrails around its use, adding transparency and predictability while ensuring that it is reserved as a last resort tool for exceptional circumstances in which both parties have reached an impasse. Any decision to invoke section 107 would require the federal government to demonstrate significant national, economic and social risks. The government will also be adding new health and safety officers to increase inspection capacity by 70%, hiring new staff at the Canadian Industrial Relations Board to clear the backlog of complaints by workers against employers and cracking down on worker misclassification with more inspectors. Together, these changes will ensure workers are treated fairly, are protected on the job and have greater income security, and they will promote stable labour relations. This is important to the workers, to their families, to people in my riding and to all Canadians. Bill C-39 would also formally designate strategic trade corridors, remove bottlenecks and establish a transportation project office to coordinate federal permitting and advance priority transportation projects within one year. Guelph is a manufacturing hub. Advanced manufacturing is Guelph’s largest employment sector, accounting for $4.5 billion in exports every year. Getting raw material in and finished products out faster and more predictably improves productivity, reduces business costs and makes Canadian business more competitive. This includes logistics and shipping companies such as PDI and Traxxside, which use the Guelph Junction railway, and multiple trucking companies. Since last spring, Canada has signed 20 new economic and security agreements. We want to export to the world. To do that, we need modern border crossings, including ports and trade digitization. When I spoke with people from UPS operations this summer in Guelph, they told me that digital trade processes will reduce costs for exporters, improve supply chain resiliency and help small and medium-sized enterprises participate in international markets. These small and medium-sized businesses sometimes get lost in the conversation on major projects. They seem far from Guelph, but these faster supply chains and trade corridors are for small and medium-sized businesses too. They account for approximately 99% of all employer businesses in Canada. There are 444 CFIB members in Guelph alone. I am so excited. I am so proud to be on the industry committee and the transportation committee at this moment in time. It is an awesome intersection. This is the most ambitious reform to how Canada builds in a generation. We are modernizing regulatory approvals, maintaining rigorous environmental standards, upholding indigenous rights and ensuring workers are treated fairly. We can all work together to build Canada now, keep Canada moving and ensure Canada is strong for all.

Dominique O'Rourke, Guelph

Liberal
“Building big projects like roads and pipelines takes time because it is hard to get the land, do the planning, and find partners. I want the member to vote for this bill so a committee can study it properly.”
Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, I believe my colleague from Calgary Confederation began to address it. First of all, when we are talking about linear infrastructure, it can take some time to assemble the land, to do the engineering, to get the partners onside, etc. That may be why. I would encourage my hon. colleague to support the bill and get it to committee, where we could have a more fulsome discussion.

Dominique O'Rourke, Guelph

Liberal
“This bill does not change our environmental laws, and projects must still follow the rules. It also helps us build pipelines so we can sell energy to our allies in Europe and Asia instead of just the United States.”
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Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, first, I would remind the House that no environmental legislation will be amended and that all existing requirements must be met. Second, thanks to oil and gas pipelines, our exports will not necessarily be going to the United States anymore; they may go to Asia and Europe instead. Given the geopolitical situation in Europe, our allies are very eager to access Canadian energy to heat their homes.

Steeve Lavoie, Beauport—Limoilou

Liberal
“Businesses and banks need predictability to invest. How does this bill give them that predictability to help encourage investment and strengthen our supply chains?”
Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, I thank my colleague for her excellent speech. I am very happy to know that there are so many manufacturers in Guelph. I come from a region that has many as well. For example, Quebec City is home to 27 industrial parks, and Beauce also has a large manufacturing sector. My colleague spoke at length about predictability. Having worked in banks and lent money to businesses, I know that all banks need predictability. All businesses and businesspeople need it, too. What does Bill C-39 contain that will help provide the predictability everyone keeps talking about, encourage investment and strengthen our supply chain?

Dominique O'Rourke, Guelph

Liberal
“This bill brings certainty for business owners, workers, and investors. We have already made deals with seven provinces to review projects under one shared process.”
Official Hansard

Madam Speaker, as I said in my remarks, since December 2025, Canada has already entered into co-operation agreements with seven provinces, in order to advance the “one project, one review” approach. I do think Bill C‑39 contains many initiatives that create certainty for business owners, workers and investors.

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