Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, I would like to begin by saying that Bill C-39 is the perfect example of a saying that often comes up in politics: Never let a good crisis go to waste. That is certainly the impression I am getting from the government side. The Liberals are using the President of the United States, Donald Trump, as a scare tactic—even though he is scary enough on his own—to justify permanent changes to our ways of doing things and our values. When I say “our”, I am referring to both Canada’s and Quebec’s ways of doing things and our values. Now that I have said that, I will return to the issue of the sunset clause. A crisis that is already frightening enough for Canadians and Quebeckers is being used to justify major legislative changes that will shake the very foundations of the temple of values that we thought were otherwise secure and that took years to build. Now, they could crumble in the blink of an eye. In a way, I find it hard to believe that people are surprised by this, since it is, after all, part of the DNA of successive governments to use crises to seize power for themselves. We have seen this in the past. I would now like to take a moment to provide a bit of background. Crises have often been used to centralize power within the federal government. Let me provide a bit of history. During the First World War, the War Measures Act was enacted, giving Ottawa powers that were otherwise generally reserved for the provinces, such as economic regulation, censorship, detention and internment. In 1917, the federal government introduced a federal income tax, a measure that was allowed under the Constitution but that had never before been implemented by the federal government. It enacted the Income War Tax Act. It was meant to be a temporary measure, but it never went away. People still have to file two tax returns in Quebec, and one tax return everywhere else, which just goes to show that nothing is more permanent than a temporary solution. We see this again with the sunset clause in Bill C-5, which called for the measures to expire after five years. Under Bill C-39, they will become permanent. In 1930, during the Great Depression, the government of Richard Bedford Bennett tried to centralize power even further on the premise that Ottawa needed to have significant economic and social capacity so it could function as a kind of welfare state. In 1940, after the crisis, the provinces transferred employment insurance to the federal government. During the Second World War, Canada managed to persuade the provinces to temporarily surrender more tax room in return for making transfer payments to the provinces to fund the wartime economy. That never went away either, and it eventually became what we now know as the “spending power”. A bit more recently, and closer to home, was the 2008-09 financial crisis, the infamous asset-backed commercial paper crisis. Once again, the federal government tried to take control of an exclusively provincial jurisdiction, securities regulation, by creating a Canada-wide securities commission, a move firmly opposed by Bloc Québécois. In fact, the Supreme Court later declared it unconstitutional. Even more recently, during COVID‑19, the federal government used its spending power to control, legislate and regulate jurisdictions outside its authority, including standards in nursing homes and long-term care facilities. It wanted to establish national standards that the provinces would have to meet in order to receive transfers, even though the provinces are the ones responsible for delivering care to the public. As history has shown us, crises have often been used to justify things that would otherwise have been considered unacceptable. Bill C‑39 is no exception, particularly when it comes to the environment. I am going to talk a bit about that. In the past, powers that belonged to the provinces were centralized. Now, however, powers that would otherwise belong to the House or to other ministers and agencies are being centralized and often concentrated in the hands of a single minister, or even the Prime Minister. All of this is allegedly being done as a way to deal with Donald Trump and the trade war, at a time when Canada wants to attract more investors. The government is saying that we are moving far too slowly, that we need to lower barriers in order to keep the economy healthy, and that this will not start until Donald Trump is gone. The government is therefore implementing measures that will last forever to solve a problem that, basically, is only temporary. For example, the government is chipping away at certain environmental pillars that we thought were firmly established. It is speeding up project assessment to the extreme, as I mentioned in my questions a little earlier. It is introducing a one-year time frame for granting permits for major projects. One year means 300 days to carry out assessments and draft the reports to be submitted to the minister, who must then make a decision within 65 days. I mentioned earlier that when a decision is made to grant a permit for a major project, the assessment of potential environmental impacts will not even cover four full seasons. Compliance with numerous laws is also going to be optional for regions designated as being of national interest. It is not clear exactly what constitutes a region of national interest. Included in those laws are the Fisheries Act; the Migratory Birds Convention Act, 1994; the Canadian Environmental Protection Act and the Species at Risk Act. We will also be relying on far fewer impartial experts to decide whether a project will move forward. The government is completely disregarding the expertise of the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada when it comes to pipelines, for example, and will be relying exclusively on the Canada Energy Regulator. However, I would like to remind the House that the CER’s mission is to keep energy moving safely and efficiently through this country’s pipelines and power lines. Its mandate is to promote energy, not to protect the environment or impartially assess the impact of a project, like the agency did. I should note that five of the CER’s seven commissioners used to work for oil companies, so I think it is safe to assume that they will have a definite bias when making decisions. A lot of decisions that used to be made by the Governor in Council will now be made by a single minister. Changes have been made to what ministers can do. I would like to quickly refer my colleagues to the document that was provided by the government itself, the summary of Bill C-39. There was a time when the Department of the Environment issued a statement on the decision it was making under the Impact Assessment Act, but the other departments issued the permits. Now, everything is in the hands of the environment minister, who will make a single decision. In the past, work could not begin until the assessments were completed, but now the environment minister will have the power to authorize work to begin in advance, even before the permits are issued. In the past, we have had environment ministers who were staunch supporters of the oil sands, such as Peter Kent. We should therefore not assume that just because someone is an environment minister, they will make decisions that are good for the environment, particularly if those decisions are ultimately made by the Prime Minister. We know that, previously, the minister could only modify the conditions imposed on a project as long as there was no adverse impact on the environment. Now, however, these kinds of changes can be authorized if the minister decides they are in the public interest. Ministers used to be able to attach conditions to assessment and permit decisions. Now, however, decision-making authorities will have to consider the technical, economic and practical feasibility of any conditions they impose on proponents who want to roll out projects. This goes to show that the bar has been significantly lowered. The government is basically tearing down the fences around the chicken coop and hoping that the foxes will not attack them. That is what we are hearing from the Liberal benches. The Liberals deny that they are lowering environmental standards. However, certain laws can be circumvented. They say that they simply hope it will not happen. I could have spoken a lot longer. I am only halfway through the third page of my presentation, and I have not even addressed the labour law issue. The Liberals say that they are going to keep protecting the right to strike, just as they say that they are going to keep protecting freedom of expression, provided that no one hears the protesters protesting. The right to strike will be protected, unless the strike disrupts the national interest. What that is, we do not know. It could simply mean any economic disruption, but a strike without disruption is not a strike. Since I have only a few seconds left, unfortunately, I must conclude my speech by reiterating that the government wants to speed things up and is using the trade war as a pretext, even though it will be over by the time we see the consequences. At the end of the day, whose interests will this national interest really serve, apart from the Prime Minister’s? It is not hard to imagine that the public will suffer many negative consequences in the short, medium and long terms.
