“This bill does not fix the real problems. The government created these problems itself by passing laws that block pipelines and major energy projects. If the government really wants to get things built, it must repeal those bad project laws and get rid of the industrial carbon tax.”

“Mr. Speaker, it is my privilege to rise today on behalf of the good people of Peace River—Westlock to discuss Bill C-39. This bill comes on the heels of Bill C-5, which was passed over a year ago and, in my opinion, proposed to do something very similar. I do question why we are here to do this if Bill C-5 was the solution to all of these problems. Why are we back again, passing another piece of legislation around this? I want to go back a little, back to about 2005, 2006, 2007, when a gentleman named Stephen Harper featured large in Canadian politics. He was making the case back then that we sold 90% of our product to the United States. While this relationship was a good one, it was a major risk to Canada in the event that, should something happen to that relationship, we would be then held ransom, essentially, by the Americans. He also pointed out that we often sold our energy products at a dramatic discount to the United States because they were our only customer. We were basically a captive market, so we were stuck selling those products to them for whatever we could get, which was often at a $10 to $18 discount per barrel. Stephen Harper pursued an ambitious agenda, which seems to now have been adopted by the Liberals, to turn Canada into an energy superpower. He tried to streamline the approvals of major projects in general across the country. He worked hard to build free trade agreements around the world. We will often hear the Liberals tell us about the agreements the Prime Minister has now signed with other countries for X, Y or Z products. However, those are essentially just really nice photo ops, because we already have free trade agreements with 60% of the world’s GDP because of the work of Stephen Harper, which he started way back in the mid-2000s. He signed 43 free trade agreements, and did that because he said we needed to diversify our markets from only selling to the United States to selling to others around the world. The two notable ones he never got across the finish line were CETA and the TPP, but shortly after Justin Trudeau took power, those two were signed. Those were not the only things he did. Stephen Harper also worked to solidify our money, to make sure our money was worth something. I remember particularly the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011, when our dollar was actually worth more than the American dollar, because Stephen Harper had worked hard to ensure we worked towards a balanced budget. He was making sure our fiscal house was in order and that we were not robbing our old people and the labourers in this country by making their money worth less and less each year, unlike the current government. The other thing he did was flatten the taxes. He worked hard to make sure that the harder we worked, the more of our money we got to take home, not the other way around. He worked on the tax rate. The tax rate is fundamental to getting things built in this country. The other thing about our money and making the money worth something was that the interest rate went down. When the interest rate went down, that spurred economic activity. I have a story about a cousin of mine. He builds houses in Edmonton, and he was telling me about how, during COVID, when the interest rates hit about zero, they built 400 units in Edmonton that year. He said that was entirely a function of the interest rate. He said that this year, they built 75 houses, and that is only because they could not carry any more houses than that because of the interest rate. He said he discovered what his company is capable of building at zero interest rate. We have the capacity in terms of manpower, skills and logistics to build 400 houses a year, but because of the higher interest rate, we are only capable of building 75 houses since we cannot carry that amount of debt over the year. An interesting thing to think about is how interest rates affect building things in this country. When builders are building things, they are often paying interest on the materials they put into a product they are building for the period of time between when they build the product, invoice it and get paid for the thing they built. That is an interesting thing. As to the tax rate, we have been talking about building and Canada becoming an energy superpower. The Liberals have adopted Conservative language on this. They are sounding like the Conservatives, but they are not doing the things it takes to make sure things happen. One thing that affects the tax rate is around what we have talked a lot about today: the price of diesel fuel. We talked about how we need to make sure we get our products to market, but also about how we need to be able to refine our own product here in Canada. The reality is that no company is going to come to Canada to refine because of the industrial carbon tax. Fertilizer companies have already complained to me bitterly about the fact that they are paying a tax that no other jurisdiction in the world has to pay. They have to compete with fertilizer coming in from out of the country that does not have these taxes. They said they are under water every month because of the industrial carbon tax. If that is what our fertilizer producers are saying, no companies are going to come to Canada to build refineries, only to lose money. That is why the government needs to incentivize companies to come here by removing the industrial carbon tax. The Liberals sound like us. We battled against the carbon tax for 10 years, and the Liberals finally came to their senses after the Canadian population was about to punish them severely over the carbon tax. They removed the consumer carbon tax, but we are not going to be an energy superpower, with all the great projects the Liberals keep talking about and insinuating will happen in Canada, without addressing that. The other thing I want to talk about is Bill C-69 and the approvals process. With Bill C-5 and now this bill, the Liberals are trying to build a workaround to Bill C-69. We have been saying for years that they are not going to get pipeline projects, major energy infrastructure and railways, all of those kinds of things, built. The big projects that everybody thinks they are going to build are not going to get built while Bill C-69 is in place. I have not heard one member of the Liberal Party mention Bill C-69 tonight. They have not said anything about the barriers that have been put in place by the Liberal government. It is super frustrating for me to see the Liberals stand here as if they are the heroes of their own story, as if they are solving the problems of Canada, while they are the ones who created those problems. Bill C-48 killed the northern gateway pipeline. I remember driving across northern British Columbia and seeing excavators on the ground. The pipe was laying in a field ready to be put in for the northern gateway pipeline. Then the Liberals dropped Bill C-48, saying people could not take petroleum product off the shore of B.C. and put it on a boat. People could build the pipeline, the Liberals said. People were welcome to build the pipeline, but they were not to take the product that was in that pipeline and put it on a boat. That was what Bill C-48 did, and when the Liberals did that, it ended the pipeline. Those two bills, Bill C-48 and Bill C-69, have to be repealed. We have to do that to match the rhetoric that we are hearing from the Liberal side. The Liberals need to work on that. Under Stephen Harper, we built six major pipelines across this country. In 2014, we had 14 LNG projects proposed. I want to remind Canadians that these projects were entirely proposed by private industry. They were going to be tax-generating projects. Canadian public coffers were going to be filled with the revenues generated by these projects. The Canadian taxpayer would not have had to pay for them. The Trans Mountain pipeline was going to be a $6-billion project. By the time the government was done building it, it was a $36-billion project. This bill is, I am afraid, another smoke and mirrors thing. I am looking forward to hearing what the Liberals have to say about it.”

“The Prime Minister did not sign new free trade deals because Canada already has them. Stephen Harper signed 43 trade deals that covered most of the world's economy. The Prime Minister only brought back a list of goals, and we want to see those things actually happen.”

“Mr. Speaker, we hear from the Liberals insinuations of things that are not true. The Prime Minister did not sign any free trade deals because we already have free trade deals. Stephen Harper signed 43 free trade deals, with 60% of the world’s GDP. The Prime Minister came back with an MOU saying that we are going to do some things. We would like to see those things get done.”

• Didn't answer
  ?

  Reply to a debate question

  Relevance 47 of 100

  None of this reply addressed the specific point raised or the topic under debate.

  See full analysis →

“The government keeps making announcements about a pipeline to the Pacific coast. When will they actually start building it?”

“Mr. Speaker, so far on Pacific link, the Liberals have the memorandum of understanding, the agreement in principle, the implementation agreement, the Major Projects Office announcement and now this. How many more announcements does the member think the Prime Minister will make about this pipeline connecting to the Pacific coast before pipe actually gets into the ground?”

“Albertans are frustrated because the government keeps announcing pipelines instead of building them. Other countries want our energy, so we need to actually build several pipelines in every direction to reach them.”

“Mr. Speaker, my hon. colleague has put her finger exactly on the problem we face in this country. Coming from Alberta, I know that the frustration Albertans are feeling with the rest of the country is not particularly about Ottawa. It is with the fact that the rest of the country thinks that we already have the pipeline. Canadians have heard so much about this pipeline that they figure it is operational. The fact of the matter is that the pipeline has been announced and announced, but we want to see it built. In fact, we do not want just one pipeline. We want several pipelines going in every direction so that we can get our products to market, because the Germans, the Japanese, the Polish and the Hungarians are all coming here pleading for Canadian energy.”

• Answered
  ?

  Reply to a debate question

  Relevance 100 of 100

  Of this reply, 100% addressed the question or point raised.

  See full analysis →

“The government talks about good feelings instead of results. Its major projects office has not approved a single new project.”

“Mr. Speaker, “The feels are good” is generally the message from the Liberal Party, that it has a lot of good feelings and a lot of goodwill. The fact of the matter is that the Major Projects Office has failed to approve one single new project.”

“This bill does not set any deadlines to finish reviews for transportation projects. It also does not require the government to create the new project office, and that office would have no power to approve anything. Why is the member claiming this bill will get projects done on time?”

“Mr. Speaker, the member talked in his speech directly about timely and coordinated reviews. He talked extensively about this applying to the transportation components of Bill C-39. He also conflated those same provisions with one year, one review. However, in Bill C-39, there is no statutory deadline for transportation projects in part 1. Part 2 contains none of that as well. He also talked about the transportation project office as being a fundamental part of the bill. Maybe the member can say, first of all, why the government did not put in a statutory timeline. Second, why is the Minister of Transport given the discretionary power to create the transportation project office? It is not even mandatory under the law. Lastly, it would have zero approval authority. What is going on? Why is the member conflating transportation projects being done on time when there is nothing in the bill that would do that?”

“I do not want this bill to pass. It does not fix our broken assessment laws, and it forces our nuclear regulator to use rules that will stop new energy projects. The bill will lead to more court challenges and scare away investment in nuclear power.”

“Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise on behalf of the enlightened constituents in the knowledge-producing riding of Algonquin—Renfrew—Pembroke to speak to Bill C-39, a Liberal omnibus bill. This omnibus bill is over 250 pages and seeks to amend over a dozen acts of Parliament, yet Canadians do not need to read past division 1 in part 1 to find the core problem. This bill does not touch the destructive mandate of the Impact Assessment Agency, and in fact it adds that mandate to the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. Before I explain why the mandate is so destructive, and how it will continue to ensure nothing gets built, we need to answer one question. Would this law have given the Canadian Nuclear Laboratories the green light to build the near surface disposal facility, NSDF, at Chalk River? While Parliament has debated this project before, I just want to quickly recap for any Canadians watching at home. Upstream from Parliament Hill is Chalk River Laboratories. Established in 1944, Chalk River was an instrumental part of the Manhattan project to develop the atomic bomb. The first nuclear reactor outside the United States was built and operated at Chalk River, reaching criticality just one month after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. For over 80 years, Chalk River has been producing leading-edge nuclear science in power generation and medical isotopes. It has also been generating low-level radioactive waste products, such as gowns, gloves and booties. All of that waste is still on site and stored following the best standards at that time. The Harper government began the process of dealing with that legacy, and the result was a plan for the near surface disposal facility. Following years of consultations with all impacted first nations bands, the project received support from the municipality and the Algonquins of Pikwàkanagàn First Nation. That is when the project went before the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. The commission undertook its own consultations with the Algonquin Anishinabeg Nation Tribal Council as part of the Crown’s study to consult under section 35 of the Constitution. The commission also began consultations with the various Algonquin bands that make up the broader nation. These consultations included Kebaowek First Nation, a band located upstream from Chalk River and whose land claim does not include Chalk River. Late in the process, Kebaowek demanded funding from the commission to support a consultation framework agreement. The band cited Justin Trudeau’s hasty adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, UNDRIP, which meant the commission had to seek free, prior and informed consent. The commission argued that it was not able to go beyond the Nuclear Safety and Control Act to interpret the treaty and how it applied to the framework of the commission. After the commission approved the construction of the near surface disposal facility, Kebaowek took the company, Canadian Nuclear Laboratories, to court, arguing that the commission had failed to follow UNDRIP when approving the construction. The band was successful before the courts, and the judge ordered new consultations to take place under the free, prior and informed consent framework. Last week, Kebaowek halted engagement with the commission, claiming the money provided by the commission was insufficient. Nothing in this bill addresses the increasing complexity of whether consultations should fall under the duty to consult framework or the free, prior and informed consent framework. Kebaowek also took the government to court over the decision to grant an environmental permit under the Species at Risk Act. Kebaowek won in Federal Court, and last June saw the ruling upheld after the government appealed. The changes in this bill to the Species at Risk Act seem designed to address some of the issues raised by the Federal Court, yet even if this bill had been law when the proud socialist environment minister issued the permit, there is still no guarantee of success. In fact, the Federal Court had ruled that the permit the minister issued was unreasonable because it did not adequately justify the decision. The amendment to the Species at Risk Act actually requires an even more robust justification. Should the Liberals appoint another radical far-left former criminal to be the environment minister, there is nothing preventing them from sabotaging the process by failing to provide sufficient justification for their decision. If the point of this bill is to build Canada even stronger, we need to reduce uncertainty, not increase it by including more politicians in the process. As we can see from the example of the near surface disposal facility and the ongoing litigation over consultations, the bill fails to address the uncertainty caused by never-ending legal challenges and appeals. In fact, the bill may signal the death of the nuclear industry in Canada, and that is because, rather than repeal the Impact Assessment Act, the bill would incorporate the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission into the mandate of that bill: The Government of Canada, the Minister, the Agency, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission and federal authorities, in the administration of this Act, must exercise their powers in a manner that fosters sustainability, respects the rights of the Indigenous peoples of Canada recognized and affirmed by section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, takes into account Indigenous knowledge, considers the cumulative effects of physical activities, applies the precautionary principle and promotes cooperation among jurisdictions and with the Indigenous peoples of Canada. The Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission has been a world-leading regulator. The commission earned its stellar reputation by applying policies and regulations rooted in science, evidence and risk management. That is the exact opposite of the approach based on the precautionary principle. While the Government of Canada has adopted “A Framework for the Application of Precaution and Science-Based Decision Making About Risk”, the document fully admits that “Ultimately, [the precautionary principle] is guided by judgment, based on values and priorities”. Canada’s nuclear future cannot be determined by the Liberal Party’s priority to be re-elected. Whether Canada develops a fusion power industry cannot be decided by the values of far-left activists and judges. By incorporating the commission into the mandate of the Impact Assessment Act, this government would open the door to endless litigation, just like we have seen with the near surface disposal facility. Canada’s current legal framework allows a single first nations band with no claim to the land that Chalk River Labs sits on, and upstream from the experimental facility, to derail a decade-long process. Kebaowek First Nation, with the help of foreign funding, was able to use UNDRIP and the Species at Risk Act to block Canada from building. This bill would open the door to any group to take any applicant to court if the commission failed to adequately apply the Impact Assessment Act. This is why no private investor wants to take the risk of building a pipeline. I imagine a gifted entrepreneur who has invented a new type of fusion reactor. Where would they decide to put their fusion company? Could they really have confidence in Canada if, after investing millions of dollars and years of filling out paperwork, their application was approved, only to turn around and have a court freeze their investment because one judge decided the commission had failed to adequately consider the sustainability of hydrogen? Just because 90% of the atoms in the universe are hydrogen, that is not going to stop the far left from claiming fusion power is the next existential threat. My Albertan colleagues dubbed the Impact Assessment Act the “no more pipelines” bill. By scooping in the nuclear commission, the Liberals are turning this into a “no more build anything” bill. No number of amendments to the act will get Canada building, so long as the mandate requires adopting anti-science ideas such as the precautionary principle. We will never achieve reconciliation if a first nation with a direct interest in a project can be dismissed in favour of a first nation with no real stake in the project. Who would invest in Canada if they can be dragged into court because a socialist minister sabotaged their permit? The Liberals will use their backdoor majority to send this bill to a special committee. That will be the last chance for these Liberals to prove whether they really do want to build Canada strong or just build bureaucracy strong.”

• Personal attack
  ?

  Speech on a bill

  Respect 97 of 100

  This statement targeted a person rather than their actions or views: “another radical far-left former criminal to be the environment minister”.

  See full analysis →

“The member insulted local First Nations people by questioning their identity. The company consulted them first about this project. The member opposes it only because of money, but the project will protect people and the environment.”

“Mr. Speaker, I think I just heard the member call the Pikwàkanagàn and the Anishinabe “pretendians”. I have never heard that before. The very first people CNL approached when this project first came to light were our first nations people. The member said it outright. This is all about money. It is not about doing the right thing and doing it safely so that the people and the environment are protected. That is what this project would do. It would make the environment and people even safer.”