“This bill lets the government skip many rules in special regions and do a regional assessment instead. Regional assessments are not as thorough as regular impact reviews. I want to know what these new assessments will cover, and if projects will still be checked under every law being set aside.”

“Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for her contribution to this important debate. Yesterday, there was a lot of discussion about creating regions of national interest. One of the government’s responses is that there are a dozen laws and seven regulations, that authorizations are deemed to have been granted in those regions, and that a regional assessment will take place. If we dig a little deeper, we see that this regional assessment process already exists, but it is really not the same kind of thing as an impact assessment. Can my colleague tell me, before the regions of national interest are defined, what the regional assessment will cover? Will an analysis be done for each of the laws that will then be set aside?”

“Under this bill, the minister can study a region, name it an area of national interest, and automatically approve projects there. The minister picks the committee and sets the rules for the study. I want to know if my colleague really thinks this is a thorough way to do things.”

“Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his contribution. I hold him in high regard. I would like to hear his perspective on the idea that the minister could conduct regional assessments and then designate a region as being of national interest. Once that happens, authorizations would be deemed to have been granted. Under Bill C‑39, all the minister would have to do to designate a region as being of national interest is conduct a regional assessment. The minister will set the terms of reference, select the members and constitute the regional assessment committee himself. Does my colleague consider this to be a rigorous approach?”

“This bill gives individual ministers powers that used to belong to the whole cabinet. That means fewer people make big decisions, like which projects get pre-approved in certain regions. I worry giving so much power to one person could lead to abuse. I want to know if my colleague shares this concern.”

“Mr. Speaker, I want to thank my colleague for her contribution to the debate, and I want to draw her attention to an issue that goes beyond Bill C-39: the centralization of power. In several sections of the bill, authority that previously rested with cabinet, for instance, will be delegated to a minister. This will result in fewer and fewer people being involved in decision-making. When it comes to the regional assessments that will lead to the creation of regions of national interest, this is exactly what will happen. As a result, it will be the minister who sets the terms of reference to determine which types of development projects will be pre-approved in a region. Is my colleague not concerned, as I am, that all this centralization of power could open the door to abuses?”

“This is a big bill, and it is hard to understand.”

“Mr. Speaker, I would like to say hello to all my colleagues here today. This is a substantial bill. It is certainly quite a challenge to try to understand it and to try to understand the— An hon. member: Oh, oh!”

“I want to restart my speech. The room is too loud, and I cannot hear myself speak.”

“Mr. Speaker, I would like to start again. I understand that the minister is excited, but I cannot hear myself speak.”

“I oppose this bill. It weakens environmental protections by giving the minister too much power to skip environmental laws and ignore assessment findings. Rushing these reviews and letting regulators approve their own industries will harm the environment.”

“Mr. Speaker, I will start over. With all due respect to the minister, it is important to stay focused, particularly as this bill is so significant. It is a very substantial bill. Last night, we sat until midnight. I listened to the debate. I did my best to listen to as much of it as possible. What my colleagues who spoke said, and what I have also said, is essentially that Bill C-39 represents a drastic step backwards for the environment, workers’ rights and democracy. It pre-approves projects by reducing environmental assessments to a mere formality, weakens workers’ rights, further concentrates power in the executive branch and opens the door to the privatization of ports, airports and other public infrastructure. This is very strong language; it stems from an analysis we carried out, which I believe was thorough. Yesterday, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources spoke to the bill. He sat through a significant portion of the debates and listened. We really appreciate that. We debated, and he looked at us. My colleague from Abitibi—Témiscamingue was an energetic participant during the debate. The parliamentary secretary laughed at us. He made fun of us. He looked at us as if we were aliens, and when he rose to speak, he told us that we had our facts wrong. He tried to teach us a lesson, to correct us, saying we had misunderstood the bill. He seems like such a credible person. After all, he comes from the company that sold us Phoenix and Cúram. Surely there is no way he could be mistaken. I decided that I should read the bill again, so I did, together with my colleague from Gaspésie—Les Îles-de-la-Madeleine—Listuguj, a lawyer and former bar association president. We spent a lot of time rereading it yesterday evening and today. What we ultimately discovered was that we had been right all along. It really does weaken environmental regulations—and workers’ rights too, but I am focusing on the environment today—in such a pernicious way that it gives the impression that the government is still conducting environmental assessments after all. That is the problem. The bill gives a lot of discretion for circumventing legislation, and it is hard to understand for ordinary people who are not used to reading laws and who are not part of a provincial bar. Here is how it works. Right now, it is true that when all sorts of environmental assessments have to be conducted, files get passed from agency to agency. There are a lot of processes involved. It is true that it follows a specific sequence, that it can take a long time, cause hassles and harm certain types of investment. We agree that that is true. We can understand the principle of taking the laws related to impact assessments and creating a one-stop shop to maintain the same due diligence while eliminating some of the hassle. We can see things from the investors’ perspective. However, that is not what this bill does. Here is what the bill says, and my colleague mentioned this several times: Before creating a region of national interest for a project, the minister will have to conduct regional assessments. Let us look at the case law and the way in which the laws are written. Under sections 92 to 96 of the Impact Assessment Act, the assessment examines the “effects of existing or future physical activities carried out in a region”. It does not specify that all of the activities must be assessed. The minister has a lot of leeway to define what is included in the assessment. We took another look at the Impact Assessment Act. We realized that the minister had the power to determine what would be assessed, what the criteria would be, how much time the committee would have and who would sit on the committee. That means he can fast-track the process and ask for things to be done quickly. He can appoint a few friends to the committee or appoint people with a vested interest. He might not do that, but from the public’s perspective, there is always justice and the appearance of justice, the independence of the process and the appearance of the process. We are losing that here. The minister conducts his assessment. Under the legislation before us today, the minister must take into account the rules and laws in effect. He cannot ignore them. He will tell the assessment committee to take such and such applicable laws and include them in its report. However, after that, the minister is free to ignore the conclusions of that regional assessment. That is what the Impact Assessment Act says. What is more, the minister can justify putting species at risk or infringing on a certain number of rights on the grounds of economic benefit or any other reason that the minister deems relevant. The minister can also list a region of national interest in schedule 2 to the act, list a project and list the acts covered by the bill, parts of which will be suspended. The project proponents will then be exempt from complying with those acts. He has the power to allow them to circumvent the law. That is how Bill C-39 is written. Of course the party in government would say that assessments will still take place, that it is just creating a one-stop shop. When a member of the public reads a 250-page bill like this one, they are bound to get the impression that this is what is happening. The minister has the power to allow project proponents to circumvent a number of federal acts, including the Fisheries Act, the Canadian Navigable Waters Act, the Convention for the Protection of Migratory Birds in the United States and Canada, the Canada Transportation Act, the Canada Marine Act, certain sections of the Canadian Environmental Protection Act, the Species at Risk Act and the Impact Assessment Act, as well as seven regulations, including the migratory bird sanctuary regulations, the wildlife area regulations, the marine mammal regulations, the metal and diamond mining effluent regulations, and the migratory birds regulations. The consequences are real. Now we have a minister who has the power to create a different regulatory regime for projects approved by, let us be honest, the Prime Minister’s Office. Anyone can see what these ministers are doing. We saw how they operated before, under Justin Trudeau. Now they are unrecognizable. They do not even look like the same people. Everyone knows that the PMO makes all the decisions and that the PMO is full of yes-men. We know that the Prime Minister selects the projects, the decision is passed down and then it moves forward. A two-tier regulatory regime seems to be taking hold. There are the projects selected by the Prime Minister, where everything will be processed quickly. Then there are the projects proposed by ordinary Canadians, who have to obey all the laws simply because they are not best buddies with the Prime Minister or a minister. That is the reality. There is also the whole issue of time limits, because the bill now enshrines them in law. We are being told that, for a pipeline, everything will have to be done within a year. I agree that there should be a one-stop shop. I agree that the process should be more efficient and our laws should be implemented more quickly and efficiently. However, when we look at what is being done elsewhere in the world, for pipelines that cross hundreds or even thousands of kilometres, a one-year deadline is below the legal minimum. What this tells us is that the government has already decided that it wants the pipeline and then it will work out the laws to get there. That is what the Prime Minister is telling us. The bill would provide for mandatory fast-tracking of assessment timelines. There are problems with this legislation. We are not making this up. We spent half the night reading the bill. It allows projects to be approved before they have been assessed. The government says to start the project and the assessment will come later. Even if the assessment ultimately concludes that the project is too harmful, that its benefits do not outweigh the cost, and that it should not move forward, the project will already have begun. The regional assessment will be conducted, then the minister will exercise his discretion, and the project will go ahead anyway. The government says assessments will still be done. If they end up being thrown out anyway, what difference does it make? What is even the point of doing assessments? Why do them at all? Why spend public funds on them? The government wants to take responsibility for conducting impact assessments away from the agency. It should just create a one-stop shop and get someone to run it. Why not ask the Canadian Impact Assessment Agency, since it has independent scientists? Why not establish the one-stop shop within a department that already has the necessary expertise, skills and resources? Why make the Canada Energy Regulator act as the one-stop shop, when its objective and mission are to deliver oil? Why get the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission to serve as the one-stop shop for nuclear projects? The government is simply telling Canadians that assessments are nothing more than window dressing, a mere formality dressed up in a Halloween costume to look like an assessment. In reality, the assessment is toothless and pointless. That is the problem. The government looks at the opposition, and sometimes government members walk out of the room while we are talking. They look at us as though all we want to do is complain and stir up trouble. However, we are doing our job as legislators with very limited resources. We are telling them that we are concerned about democracy, the concentration of power, the loss of expertise and the environment. We might have been able to come to an agreement on the principle of this bill, but the government is telling us that it has a majority. It is just going to continue to push this through however it can. That is a bad way of crafting legislation. I know that this bill will pass because the government has a majority, but, given the facts, it is clear that all of the concerns raised by the opposition yesterday evening are valid and people have good reason to be concerned.”

“I do not want this bill passed as it is written. The government is taking away people's land for projects without proper studies, plans, or costs. The Liberals write the bills, and they need to write a better one that we can change.”

“Mr. Speaker, my colleague knows that I respect him, but clearly, spending 20 years in banking does not nurture logical thinking. My colleague is new here; he has not been here long. He needs to understand that the Liberals have a majority and that when they introduce bills, those are government orders. My colleague is talking about the status quo. This bill will be passed. We are engaging in constructive discussion to ensure that initiatives that have value for society—a net positive value—move forward. We are studying the bill, but they are the ones drafting the bills. Government orders are written by them. We spend our days studying what they give us. My colleague is talking about Lac‑Mégantic, and he is starting to scare people. This process will result in expropriations. Speaking of trains, they are also in the process of expropriating land in Mirabel without an assessment, without a project, and without any financial details. They are walking around private property in my riding and announcing that they want to expropriate precisely for this reason, precisely because of this way of doing things. They have a bulldozer approach. They are running roughshod over people without being prepared. My colleague speaks of maintaining the status quo. They should introduce better legislation, legislation that is open to amendment. I have been here for more than five years, and we have tabled amendments before. The process worked well. My colleague should know that government orders are written by the ministers. They should write better ones.”

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“This bill lets the minister review an entire region ahead of time and then do whatever he wants. It allows the government to approve many projects all at once using broad rules, instead of checking each project on its own.”

“Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague for his insightful remarks. Listening to him contributes to our collective understanding of Bill C‑39. One issue that we have homed in on is the possibility of pre-approving projects. If we think about the regions of national interest, and I would like to hear my colleague’s views on this, it is apparent that the regional assessment would be conducted in advance, and the minister would make the decision afterwards. The minister will read the reports, but then he is free to do whatever he wants. As long as a regional assessment has been completed, the minister can proceed as he sees fit. The minister would then be able to designate and describe a region and approve specific categories of projects and criteria. Would my colleague not agree that this is a way of pre-approving projects en masse based on very general criteria, rather than on assessments of the individual projects?”

“I oppose this bill's plan to pre-approve projects. It creates an unstable and unfair system. Projects can be pre-approved and break laws later, while investors without special access to the government still have to follow the regular rules.”

“Mr. Speaker, my colleague is right in his analysis. The government tells us that investors are reaching out, that it wants investment, and that we need a stable regulatory environment, or so the Liberals say. However, what is being proposed here is not a stable regulatory environment. There is no regulatory environment. An investor is told that their project will be pre-approved and that, when the report comes out, at worst, it will be scrapped or parts of it will be removed, and then three or four laws will be violated just to move it forward. That is not a stable regulatory environment. There is nothing more unstable than that. It is a lack of regulation, but it is also an injustice. What happens to investors who do not have access to the Prime Minister’s Office or are not a priority to the current government? Those investors have to comply with the other laws. This is an asymmetrical and unpredictable regulatory regime, and I do not think it necessarily serves the government’s objectives.”

“This bill shows the government does not care about the environment. I want federal experts to review big projects, not the oil companies themselves. That would be faster and follow the law. The government should change the bill to do this instead of using their majority to force it through.”

“Mr. Speaker, I do not have a good read on my colleague. I do not know whether he cares about the environment or not, but I do know that, to anyone who reads Bill C-39, it is clear that the Liberals do not care about it. If that is not the case, then it needs to be fixed. For example, would my colleague agree that the government should set up a one-stop shop for businesses, but that it should be up to the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada to assess projects, rather than having oil companies assess oil projects? It would speed up the process and make it more efficient while ensuring compliance with the law, so why not? If the Liberals are open to that, we can talk. They have a majority. They will steamroll over us, which is what they have been doing since they got their majority. However, what I suggested would be in the interests of the environment, the economy and society. As Chief Justice Wagner of the Supreme Court of Canada said recently, the rule of law must be protected.”