Official Hansard
Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to speak to this very important bill today. I want to start with the context of the legislation and the context that became quite apparent during the election campaign. I want to start with that because it is important to establish the “why” of this piece of legislation and what is guiding the government’s agenda. I am going to start with a quote from our campaign manifesto because it identifies very well the calls that Canadians had around the items in this bill and that indeed motivated many people in their support of our campaign. It is on the very first page of the manifesto: Canada is the best country in the world. Our sovereignty is under threat. America’s unjustified trade war is an attempt to weaken us. We will not let that happen. It’s time to build a future that makes Canada strong. We can give ourselves much more than any foreign government, including the United States, can ever take away. Building one Canadian economy, for example, can expand our economy by up to $200 billion—proof that we are strongest when we are united. To unite this country, [we] will build one economy where Canadians can work wherever they want. Where goods can move freely from coast to coast to coast. Where the government’s significant purchasing power buys Canadian goods and supports Canadian industries and workers. Where we use domestic strength to grow a strong economy that can never be taken away. As Canadians, we have our own unique identity, history, and geography. To keep Canada strong, we will protect our culture, protect our environment, and protect our core values. And continue to build in true partnership with Indigenous Peoples. That was the context of this campaign, and that was the context that resulted in the questions and encouragement I was hearing from constituents in Taiaiako’n—Parkdale—High Park. It really came down to three or four things that were underlying the arguments we were making and the support we got. First, Canadians and people in Taiaiako’n—Parkdale—High Park were looking for a new generation of economic growth in the context of the attack on our sovereignty and in the context of the realization that we needed to do some things differently. They were also looking for climate policy that works, that gets results, that continues to achieve the greenhouse gas reductions we need and that gets us to net zero by 2050. They also observed, especially in contrast to the economic growth that they were seeking and the sovereignty that they expected us to express, some frustrations with the ways that we build. Indeed, in this bill, we have been talking about projects that cover vast distances. In cities, we also build. The residents of the city of Toronto and the residents in my riding have been getting frustrated on occasion by the slow pace of building, whether it is building transportation infrastructure in particular or building the other kinds of economic goods that maybe are not as visible. On transportation infrastructure, there is the Eglinton Crosstown LRT and other transportation projects that are taking a long time to build. However, we have other economic and transportation projects that are delivering results to people in our ridings and to people in cities. It is an important question when we look at the kinds of projects that this bill is contemplating, like the natural resource projects and the energy and electricity projects. They might appear to be far away from urban residents, but people in our ridings and people in urban Canada see the benefit of these projects that are being built sometimes far away from them because we have nuclear engineers in our ridings. We have tradespeople. We have people who work in the oil and gas sector. We have people who work on electricity, on renewable energy and definitely in ports and transportation. I have people in my riding, in a beautiful corner of west Toronto, Taiaiako’n—Parkdale—High Park, who work in the services sectors that are covered by the kinds of projects we are talking about in this bill. We can talk about how we build in cities, especially in a city like Toronto, the capital of the largest province in Canada, the financial capital of this country, a centre for research, a centre for innovation and a centre of not only the services economy but the goods economy. There is manufacturing that happens within our borders, including in my riding, and people are looking at those things and the broader picture of how economic growth happens. They were asking us the question during the campaign, “Can we catalyze a new generation of economic growth while asserting sovereignty and achieving climate policy results?” This bill is a very natural response to the kinds of things that people in west Toronto, in my riding of Taiaiako’n—Parkdale—High Park and indeed across the country were responding to and expecting when the campaign was unleashed and when the words that I read in our party’s manifesto were written. I think it is really important to share some of the things the bill would do and some of the things the bill would not do, because I think there has been a lot of misinformation and a lot of misconceptions about what the bill would and would not do. I will give some examples. For instance, the bill would allow an opportunity to formally designate strategic national trade corridors. I think a lot of Canadians would be surprised that the federal government does not have this power already. This is a very important thing to be able to do if we are going to be building transportation infrastructure. This bill would also give the power to declare regions of national interest. I see this as part of good planning. Cities already have the power to do land use planning. Provinces often have industrial regions. We have Alberta’s industrial heartland, and there are many parts of cities that provide a set way of doing regional planning for economic purposes, while also including the full set of environmental considerations for certain species and other considerations. The bill would simply brings that lens to the opportunities that the federal government might identify with partners. I think a lot of people would be surprised that these powers do not exist already. Where the bill says to do those kinds of things, it would not mean we end consultations. In fact, before and after permits are issued, there would still be consultation involved. This bill would not mean we would disregard cumulative effects. In fact, when we do regional planning, the kind of planning that is contemplated by the processes in this bill, land use planning cumulative effects would still be very much at the fore. Enabling digital trade is another key part of this bill. I think Canadians would be very surprised that digital documents in the transportation sector are not already recognized as being equivalent. This is a very positive measure to help the federal government help people who are involved in trade and transportation-related trade to catch up to the ways of doing business that we would expect. The bill would provide for one year for reviews for pipelines, designated power lines and offshore renewable energy projects. That is what it would do. It would not presume the outcome of any review. It would not say that a project will or will not go ahead. It would provide a one-year timeline, and it would provide that opportunity for, in particular, designated power lines and offshore renewable energy projects. I am going to get to those in a second. Bill C-39 would provide, as my colleague from Calgary Confederation and the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations mentioned, the coordination of indigenous consultations. It would not end UNDRIP. It would not change our obligations under the charter in section 35. Those are entirely preserved. The bill would provide the coordination that makes it easier for indigenous peoples, and especially smaller communities, to take part meaningfully in consultations. The bill would codify existing practices, including some economic and other considerations in the species at risk determinations. It would not end or gut the Species at Risk Act in any way. In fact, one of the major things we did from the consultation we did at the outset of this bill, which resulted in reports over the summer that were published in the early fall and that helped inform this legislation, was remove the limited exemptions to the jeopardy test that were of rightful concern to many Canadians. The legislation would do a lot of things that would provide economic certainty and provide certainty to investors, but it would maintain high standards. This piece of legislation would not do a lot of the things that some of the fearmongering that I have heard in this House alleges. This is also in the context of an incredibly rich set of climate policy achievements that this government has brought forward. They are achievements like the national electricity strategy, which is going to double our electricity generation with major projects like Churchill Falls. It is a very exciting project that has been mentioned repeatedly in my riding of Taiaiako’n—Parkdale—High Park. The bill would tackle the methane emissions that we have been looking to tackle for a long time. We have an industrial carbon price that has been preserved despite the complaints from the members opposite. It has clean energy tax credits. We have a nature strategy, an oceans protection strategy, EV rebates and a whole set of climate policy objectives that are an important piece of context for the bill. They are not in the bill, but they all create the permission space for us to do the kind of work we need to do, especially in electrification. In fact, I would argue that if members want to accelerate the move to net zero and do more electrification, then they should get behind this bill 100%, because it would create the permissions, opportunities and timelines to get electrification done faster. That is the context of the bill. It would mean that we can build in the right way, build towards net zero and we can build sustainably. I appreciate the chance to participate in the debate.
