Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, I wish I had more than 10 minutes to deal with this. I will do my best, but this omnibus bill, Bill C-39, represents an extremely large threat to this country and to our economy, because it would allow billions of dollars of tax money to be thrown at projects that would not have to clear even the most basic cost-benefit analysis before being declared projects of national interest. I want to first of all clarify that this bill is enormous and I will not be able to give equal attention to all parts of it. In terms of part 3 and the threat it represents to collective bargaining and respect for the trade union movement, I want to make it clear that the Green Party completely supports the concerns of the Canadian Labour Congress, and wants to work hard to see part 3 substantially amended. Part 1 of Bill C-39 and part 2 of Bill C-5, the so-called Building Canada Act, are built on fallacies without evidence. This is a fundamentally important point, because all our debate takes place in a dream world where everyone accepts a bunch of fallacies without evidence. The primary fallacy is that moving fast is desirable and smart. Sometimes old truisms are actually true. Haste makes waste. If we want something that is not built on fallacies but has abundant evidence, I recommend to government members a book by Bent Flyvbjerg and Dan Gardner called How Big Things Get Done. They had a database of, believe it or not, 16,000 megaprojects that they studied, and most of them failed. Why did they fail? Small projects often succeeded. Bigger projects failed. When I say “failed”, I mean that they were not just a little bit over budget but something like 300% and 400% over budget and years late. I will just very quickly summarize what the book tells us: Most projects fail because people rush into execution with weak plans, optimism bias and political pressures. Does that ring any bells around here? The authors’ advice is “Think slow, act fast.” What we have here is a rush to get things done, without examining how and why. As a matter of fact, if anyone looks at How Big Things Get Done, they would look at Bill C-5 and Bill C-39 and say we had better pull the plug on those before we make massive mistakes that will leave us deeper in debt and without getting progress for our economy, while certainly leaving the environment and indigenous rights in tatters. The fallacies are really important to at least talk about before we once again rush through a process to pass a piece of legislation that, like Bill C-5, is based on massive political discretion, decisions made in cabinet with no transparency and without even the kind of evidence one would need for a business case or a cost-benefit analysis. In the case of Treasury Board guidelines before regulations, the cabinet directive for cost-benefit analysis for regulations would give the government a template one would need to know. We have, in our first example of a project referred to the Major Projects Office, as designated by cabinet as the first since Bill C-5 passed in late June of last year, the first time cabinet has said this is a project in the national interest. There were not any criteria in the legislation to guide them, and then they said they would let us know what the criteria were later, but they have approved the project with no cost-benefit analysis and no information. I mentioned earlier tonight that in the Canada Gazette, the government actually mis-characterizes the project in the description, which is not long. The description the government put on the Gazette website for Canadians to respond to claimed that the project is a pipeline to deliver crude oil. It may not matter to people in the PMO what the difference between crude oil and diluted bitumen is, but in fact, they have very different markets in different countries. Some refineries can handle some, but most cannot. In any case, there is a very significant difference in the kind of hazard that diluted bitumen represents. If the Liberals cannot describe it right when they put it out for public consultation, it does not inspire a lot of confidence that they know what they are doing at all. On top of that, we had no cost-benefit analysis, no further information as to why the project is in the national interest. I remember that on the floor of the House in June last year, the Minister of Energy said it would not be politicians deciding what projects are in the national interest. There would have to be a private sector proponent. If there is a private sector proponent, the projects are going to make money. There is no private sector proponent for the first project the government picked out of Bill C-5. It is the Government of Canada, the Government of Alberta and a company called Pembina Pipeline, which is willing to maybe stake 10% of the whole project. We are on the hook for this, and it is going to plow through and bulldoze through some of the most sensitive marine ecosystems on the coast of British Columbia, but that is okay, because the Prime Minister’s Office press release says that we are avoiding ecologically sensitive areas. Again, this provides no confidence whatsoever that the government even understands the basics of what it is supposed to do as a responsible government. I am going to go back to Bill C-5, because it is really important to understand. Again, to point to my friend, the member for Taiaiako’n—Parkdale—High Park, go back to Bill C-5 and look at the exemptions that are listed in subsection 21(2). I know I do not have a lot of time, but I have to read them so the public understands that cabinet is not authorized to make exemptions under the following acts: Access to Information Act, the Canada Elections Act, the Canada Labour Code, the Conflict of Interest Act, the Criminal Code, the Foreign Influence Transparency and Accountability Act, the Investment Canada Act, the Lobbying Act, the Official Languages Act, the Use of French in Federally Regulated Private Businesses Act, the Indian Act, the Auditor General Act, the Extractive Sector Transparency Measures Act, the Railway Safety Act, the Trade Unions Act, the Explosives Act and the Hazardous Products Act. Guess what laws are not on the list that the government cannot make exemptions to. It is the laws that would also be amended in C-39, and I will tell members how they would be amended. They are the laws that I specifically tried to have added as amendments to Bill C-5, which were rejected by the Liberals and the Conservatives, to add that exemptions could not be made under the Fisheries Act, the Navigable Waters Protection Act, the Species at Risk Act and others of that nature. We absolutely know that the Liberals thought about it and decided no, that they wanted to be able to run through those with a bulldozer. That is okay. They are going to do that, because they have done that in Bill C-5, and I sometimes feel like I am watching a soap opera and everyone forgot season one. Season one was Bill C-5. We are now in a Möbius loop, where we are still talking the same fallacies with no evidence, but we are in season two. In season two, it is more of the same, only worse, because they are really hoping that people were so bedazzled by the drama of season one of the soap opera that they are not keeping track of the cumulative impact of two omnibus bills with so radically different titles that we should be able to keep them straight: the Building Canada Act and the build Canada strong act. What the Liberals have done in Bill C-39 with the Species at Risk Act, the Impact Assessment Act, the Navigable Waters Protection Act, the Fisheries Act and others, is to add for the first time that governments, when adding conditions to approvals of projects, would have to consider whether these conditions are economic, feasible or practical. The previous transport minister, my friend whose name I will say because it gives the time context, was Omar Alghabra. When the government did the wrong thing and approved Roberts Bank, he said not to worry because they had 320 binding conditions that will protect the environment. Everyone knew they would not protect species at risk, but they were supposedly binding conditions. With Bill C-39, if it passes, there would be no such thing as binding conditions because the proponent could come back and say, “Wait a minute. I don’t see evidence that the minister considered that we can’t afford to live up to your conditions.” They cannot be managed. That is why Bill C-39 would further erode laws that the government has already done in Bill C-5 as discretionary if they are in the way of building some big thing with no evidence it is going to make sense. I really do think that deep geological disposal of nuclear waste actually happens to be one of the projects that the government has talked about, which is actually specifically referenced in the book I mentioned, How Big Things Get Done, as where we never want to be: developing a prototype for something that has never been done, such as, for instance, deep geological disposal of nuclear waste. My God, are the Liberals not embarrassed? Can they read legislation? I am sorry, but I can. I went to law school. I learned legislative drafting and statutory interpretation. They would get an F on this in law school if they submitted it as a term paper. It cannot be tracked. It cannot be read. We cannot keep track of what one goes to the other. Is anything defined? It is a pile of political discretion and spin. It is fiscal recklessness disguised as economic wisdom. I suppose it is something that only the current Prime Minister could get away with.
