SoVote

Decentralized Democracy

House Hansard - 261

44th Parl. 1st Sess.
December 4, 2023 11:00AM
  • Dec/4/23 4:13:48 p.m.
  • Watch
  • Re: Bill C-50 
Mr. Speaker, I am sure that many Conservative colleagues who represent oil and gas workers and rural or remote northern Canadians and who will be hurt by the culmination of the anti-energy agenda, represented by Bill C-50 and the just transition's top-down, central-planning Soviet aim to restructure the Canadian economy and redistribute wealth, will have many questions today. However, I just wonder, off the top, how the minister can possibly justify such a significant, fundamental, never-seen-before piece of legislation and agenda for our country and for the fundamentals of our Canadian economy, and justify ramming it through with fewer than eight hours total of debate for all members of Parliament from every region of this country, who are just trying to do our jobs on behalf of the people who sent us here.
140 words
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border
Mr. Speaker, what a thing to witness this coalition collude to cover-up and take a top-down action to force through a top-down bill. The Conservatives will not stop the fight for the people we represent and for the best interests of all Canadians. To review, the Liberals rammed through first the Atlantic offshore bill, Bill C-49, which includes 33 references to the five-year-old unconstitutional law, Bill C-69, that the Liberals have not fixed yet. By the way, Bill C-49 would triple the timeline for offshore renewables in the Atlantic provinces. Then was the just transition bill, Bill C-50. This was after fewer than nine hours and eight hours of total debate from all MPs on each. On October 30, the NDP-Liberals tried to dictate every aspect of how the committee would deal with those bills. They reversed their own order to hold back Bill C-49 and spent a month preoccupied with censorship and exclusion of Conservatives like the member for Sherwood Park—Fort Saskatchewan and the member for Peace River—Westlock. The extraordinary motion being debated and the debate shutdown today mean the committee will be limited to less than two hours of scrutiny on Bill C-50. We will hear from no witnesses, no impacted workers or businesses, no experts, no provincial or regional representatives, no economists, no indigenous communities, no ministers and no officials, and MPs will only have one partial day each to review and debate this bill at the next two stages. I never thought I would spend so much of the last eight years having to count on senators to really do the full scrutiny that the NPD-Liberals' bills require after the fact because the coalition circumvents elected MPs on the front end so many times. One would think after the Supreme Court absolutely skewered them all on Bill C-69, which both the NDPs and the Liberals supported, that we would see a change of behaviour and attitude, but no, not these guys. They are reckless and ever undaunted in their top-down authority. The NDP-Liberals will say that the government has been working on it for years, that it has engaged unions all the time and ask what the hold up is. We heard that from the member for Timmins—James Bay earlier, even though what he did not admit was that at the time the committee was studying the concept of the just transition and the NDP-Liberals moved forward with announcing their legislation before it reported anyway. They will say that we should just get this done so Bill C-50 can give the reskilling, upskilling and job training workers need and want when they all lose their jobs because of government mandates. I have a couple of points to make. First, it sure is clear the NDP-Liberals have been working together on something for a while since they were all together to announce the bill. Second, everybody needs to know there is not actually a single skills or job program anywhere in this bill at all. Third, cooking up something behind closed doors then being outraged and cracking down on the official opposition when we suggest we should all actually do our jobs, speak to represent our constituents, and most importantly, let Canadians speak so we can actually hear from them on the actual bill, and then analyze it comprehensively and propose changes and improvements, is a top-down central planning approach that sounds an awful lot like the way we have characterized Bill C-50, the just transition itself that has caused some outrage in the last few days. Bill C-50, the just transition, aims to centrally plan the top-down restructuring of the fundamentals and the foundations of Canada's economy. It aims to redistribute wealth. It is a globally conceived, planned and imposed agenda. It is, in fact, a major focus of a globalist gathering going on right now, the same kind of gathering where it started years ago. I confess, I do not really get all the consternation about stating that fact since the definition of globalism is “the operation or planning of economic informed policy on a global basis.” That is of course what is happening with the just transition and the many international bodies that bring together politicians, policy advocates and wealthy elites from around the world to plan economic and foreign policy globally. That is while they all contribute significantly to increasing global emissions to get there and back, while they dream up more schemes to tell the folks back home that they cannot drive; live in a house, on any land or farm; or, for those who can afford it, fly. We will all have to eat insects while they all do the exact opposite, even while they bring home agendas that will make essentials and daily life so expensive for all the rest of us that we will have no choice. Globalism is literally the function of numerous organizations all explicitly heavily focused on imposing the just transition for years. Today, it is linked to the concept of the global citizen and of postnational states with no independent identities, just like the current Prime Minister said of Canada when he was elected. That is what is happening at COP28 right now. It is in the UN 2030 plan. It is the top priority of lots of many well-known and respected gatherings, such as the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation organization and others. It is bizarre that the NDP-Liberals deny and attack all this now, when globalism is obviously implicit in its ideology. I thought they were proud of that. They have all been outraged about this, but the truth hurts. Anger is often a cover for hurt, so maybe that is what all their rage is about. Maybe their issue is that I call it Soviet-style central planning, except for this: Bill C-50 really would create a government-appointed committee to advise the minister. The minister would then appoint another committee to plan the economy. This bill would not mandate that any of that would happen through openness and transparency. Neither of the committees would report either to Parliament or directly to Canadians along the way. I guess the coalition members want to say that it is a win that the reports would be tabled in the House of Commons, but that would not guarantee any kind of debate or accountability. The members are proving their true colours through how they are handling the bill now, especially since it is clear that they want to impose it all with little challenge and almost no scrutiny from beginning to end. Oh right, it is there in the summary, in black and white for all the world to see. When would those plans from the government committees for Canada's economy be imposed? It would be every five years. That is literally the time frame for central planning that Soviets preferred. However, the NDP-Liberals are somehow shocked and outraged, even though the lead NDP-Liberal minister is a guy who is a self-declared “proud socialist”, as came out of his own mouth in this very chamber. Right now, he is at a conference about the progress of the global just transition. There are no costs outlined in this bill either, even though it would obviously cost taxpayers, just as the NDP-Liberals' mega sole-source contracts for their buddies; infrastructure banks and housing funds that cost billions of tax dollars and build neither infrastructure nor houses, only bureaucracy; and hundreds of thousands of dollars on consultants to tell the government to use fewer consultants. There would be a cost to create and maintain the just transition partnership council, on pages six to 10, that would advise the minister and then the secretariat that the minister would have to create. However, this bill does not tell Canadians about any of the cost that taxpayers would have to pay for all that, up front and after. It is quite something to see the inclusion of the words “accountability” and “transparency” in the long title of Bill C-50, since it is all actually about government-appointed committees meeting behind closed doors and a minister who would cook up central plan after central plan. It would mandate neither transparency nor accountability at all, whether directly to Canadians or through their MPs, and it would not include an actual outline for one or any kind of skills- or job-training program. That is how this whole thing was baked in the first place. Their rushed, top-down schedule today is to ram it through with as little analysis from MPs and input from Canadians as possible. It is a little silly for all the NDP-Liberals to be mad now that the official opposition actually wants MPs to do our jobs to debate, consult, amend and improve legislation, especially with such a wide-ranging and significant one such as Bill C-50 and the economic transition it would impose. What about the tens of thousands of Canadians whose jobs were devastated by the NDP-Liberals' fast-tracked coal transition? The environment commissioner said this was a total failure. It left 3,400 Canadian workers in about a dozen communities completely behind. However, the government members say to just trust them to engineer an economic transition for 2.7 million Canadians and the entire country. What about the nearly 40,000 people in Newfoundland and Labrador who were all put out of work completely when they were promised that the government would help them transition from cod? It was the largest industrial shutdown in Canadian history at the time. It was a disaster for all of them: their loved ones, their communities and their province. I hope they see Bill C-50 as the end of oil and gas in Canada bill that it is, because the impact of the oil and gas sector in Newfoundland and Labrador is a quarter of the province's total GDP. It is higher than that in Alberta. It is 40% of Newfoundland and Labrador's exports, and 6,000 people in Newfoundland and Labrador in the oil and gas service and supply sector have lost their jobs already, just in the last three years, because of the uncertainty and the NDP-Liberals' anti-energy policies. The government's intent now, through Bill C-50, is like nothing Canada has ever seen before. Canadians could be forgiven for knowing that this would not go well. A truly bizarre point about all this that should be noted, though, is as follows: Despite the collusion between the NDP and Liberals on the bill for about two years, other opposition MPs such as Conservatives do not actually get to see the bills until the government tables them. Despite what I hear really were some round tables and consultation meetings, there is not actually any tangible delivery of what the bill's own proponents say that it does for skills and job training. It is not in here anywhere, which is one of the many reasons Conservatives say that the natural resources committee must actually do its job and, most importantly, must hear from all the Canadians it would impact. Both union and non-union workers, as well as union leaders, should be outraged about it. What really did happen with all the time, effort and money that was apparently sunk into developing it behind closed doors between 2021 and 2023? Since the bill sets up committees to plan to set up committees to plan from on high, why the heck did all this require a law in the first place? Government, unions and businesses consult, develop plans and report. Okay, what is holding this up from going ahead? Why is Bill C-50 even required for that work to happen if they all want it to? How is this actually all the Liberal-NDP government has come up with? How is any Canadian supposed to trust these guys to deliver on anything, when it took all this time and all these meetings and tax dollars, but there is not even an actual plan or program? They would not even get a recommendation for two years. It is sort of like the ITCs that the NDP-Liberals keep talking and bragging about, as if they are doing anything in our economy right now. Actually, they do not even exist at all in Canada yet. Of course, Conservatives and more and more Canadians know that Bill C-50 really is all about the just transition and ending oil and gas in Canada as fast as they possibly can. The NDP-Liberals have shown this repeatedly after eight years. A government, of course, that did not want to kill the sector and all the livelihoods it sustains really would not do anything differently from what these guys have done and continue to do. Everyone can read it. In the 11 pages and 21 clauses of Bill C-50, there is not one single instance of a skills- or job-training program. That is the truth. Now, because of the NDP-Liberals, neither union nor non-union workers will be able to speak or be heard by MPs at any remaining stage of the top-down agenda for this bill. In fact, nobody will: no workers, contractors, business owners, investors or indigenous owners, partners, workers or contractors. Therefore, I will talk about some of those workers now. I have a few points. First, the reality is that the biggest growth of well-paying union jobs in Canada right now is actually created by the big multinational oil and gas companies expanding and ramping up new oil, gas and petrochemical projects in Alberta. These are the same companies that made Alberta, by far and away, Canada’s leader in clean tech, renewable and alternative energy for at least 30 years. For the record, today, Alberta is again Canada’s leader in renewable energy. In fact, the investment commitments for renewables and future fuel development in Alberta have doubled to nearly $50 billion of private sector money planned and ready to invest, since the premier paused to set the conditions, to guarantee consultation, certainty and confidence for all Albertans, while the regulator keeps taking applications. However, the NDP-Liberals will not admit that to us either. Second, where we are at is that the major oil and gas companies are leading the creation of new union jobs in Canada. However, this is actually the very sector that the just transition agenda would shut down first. The main thing every union worker needs is a job. That is what is at risk. Third, the anti-energy coalition also refuses to admit the fact that, in Canada, traditional oil and gas, oil sands and pipeline companies have been, far and away, the top investors in the private sector for decades and, today, in clean tech, environmental innovation and renewables among all the private sectors in Canada, excluding governments and utilities. Likewise, oil and gas is still, right now, the top private sector investor and top export in Canada’s economy. The truth is that nothing is poised to match or beat it any time soon. Nothing comes close. The stakes of the anti-energy agenda imposed by the costly coalition for Canada are exceptionally grave. Here are some facts about the businesses and workers that would be hurt the most by the just transition agenda, Bill C-50. In Canada’s oil and gas sector, 93% of companies only have up to 99 employees. They are small businesses, and 63% of those businesses are considered micro-businesses, with fewer than five employees. That is the truth about workers and businesses in Canada’s oil and gas sector, especially the homegrown, Canadian-based ones. They are not union businesses, although their jobs are also sustainable; they are also higher paying, with reliable long-term benefits, than jobs in most sectors. Large employers, with over 500 people on payroll, account for just over 1%, not 2%, of the total oil and gas extraction businesses in Canada; that is it. Those businesses are mostly union workplaces and support more union jobs than the rest of the sector. However, they are also among the first businesses that Bill C-50’s agenda would kill and that, after eight years, the NDP-Liberals have been incrementally damaging. Again, there would be no oil and gas sector, no businesses and no jobs, union or otherwise. That is the truth. It also means higher costs and less reliable power, especially where most Canadians have no affordable options, as in rural, remote, northern, prairie, Atlantic and indigenous communities, with fewer businesses and jobs. There would be less money for government programs, since the oil and gas sector currently pays the most to all three levels of government, and less private sector money for clean tech and innovation. Which workers do the NDP-Liberals already know that their unfair, unjust transition in Bill C-50 would hurt the most? If colleagues can believe this, it would be visible minority and indigenous Canadians. Both ethnically diverse and indigenous Canadians are more highly represented in the energy sector than they are in any other sector in Canada’s economy, but the internal government-leaked memo that I am assuming colleagues have seen says they are expected to face higher job disruptions than any other workers. They would also have more trouble finding new opportunities. They would end up in lower-paying, more precarious jobs, as would be the case for all workers who lose their livelihoods to this radical, anti-energy global agenda. Canadians will know instantly, of course, from these numbers that the top targets to be crushed by Bill C-50 are the 93% and 63% of Canadian businesses, the small- and micro-businesses, their workers and all their contractors. Bill C-50 does not contemplate them at all. There is no consideration about all the non-union workers who will lose their jobs in the just transition agenda. These are the homegrown, Canadian-based and owned businesses with Canadian workers who have been doing their part for environmental stewardship, innovation, clean tech, actual emissions reductions and indigenous partnerships to the highest standards in Canada and, therefore, in the entire world, just like the big guys here. Since the NDP-Liberals refused to allow this, my office spoke with one of those union workers last week, a worker from Saskatchewan. He said, “I am not happy with the fact that I will be displaced out of a job from a federal mandate.” No matter what the NDP-Liberals try to call this or say about it now, he had it right. That is exactly what would happen to that union worker. There is nothing, not a single thing, about all the non-union workers, who would obviously lose their jobs first, nor is there any space for union workers who do not want the transition accelerated by the anti-energy, anti-private sector NDP-Liberals. There is nothing about the communities and the people who would be damaged the most, nothing about what sector actually can and will replace the jobs and economic contributions of the oil and gas sector. Of course, right now, there is no such sector. There is nothing about all those hundreds of thousands of oil and gas union workers whose employers would also be put out of work quickly, as is the actual aim of Bill C-50. It is no wonder that the NDP-Liberals want to silence Canadians, so they can do this quickly and behind closed doors. They too must know that common-sense Canadians can see right through them, and they are running out of time. I have a last point about the chair of the natural resources committee, the member for Calgary Skyview. When I congratulated him on his recent appointment, I told him the Liberals have done him no favours by putting him there to help impose their agenda. The people of Calgary Skyview will render their decision in the next election, as is their right, like it is for all Canadians. I warned a former natural resources minister from Alberta that his constituents would see his betrayal. I said this in our last emergency committee meeting about the TMX, which has still not been built, in the summer heading into the 2019 election. Colleagues will notice that this member was not sent back here. I suspect that the people of Calgary Skyview will feel the same in this instance. In hindsight, I suspect this will not be worth it for the member for Calgary Skyview, but we all make choices and face the consequences. I move: That the motion be amended by: (a) replacing paragraph (a) with the following: “(a) during the consideration of the bill by the Standing Committee on Natural Resources; (i) the Minister of Natural Resources and its officials be ordered to appear as witnesses for no less than two hours; (ii) members of the committee submit their lists of suggested witnesses concerning the bill, to the clerk, and that the Chair and clerk create witness panels which reflect the representation of the parties on the committee, and, once complete, that the Chair begin scheduling those meetings; (iii) a press release be issued for the study of the bill inviting written submissions from the public and establishing a deadline for those submissions,”; and (b) deleting paragraphs (b) and (c). Every member of the chamber has an ability to prove that they actually support democracy by supporting our amendment.
3653 words
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border
  • Dec/4/23 5:51:01 p.m.
  • Watch
Madam Speaker, after eight years of the Liberal government, out of four major oil pipeline proposals, zero have gone forward. One is ballooning and ballooning because the government chose to buy it instead of giving it certainty, and it is still not built. There have been 18 proposals for LNG projects in this country, and not a single one has been built. Only one is being constructed, and it was approved by the former government. To be clear, Conservatives believe that what Ukraine needs is energy and weapons, which is what we proposed. It is because of the NDP-Liberals that we cannot get energy out the door to reduce dependency on Russian gas. I appreciate that the member asked me the question, because I am married to a Ukrainian, grew up in the cradle of the Ukrainian settlement in Lakeland, and represent a very Ukrainian community. I wonder what the member's government think about the fact that it really did not give a rip about any of the Ukrainian workers and families it put out of work with no cost analysis when it shut down the best-performing immigration centre in the entire country.
196 words
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border
  • Dec/4/23 5:53:31 p.m.
  • Watch
Madam Speaker, I enjoy working with the member on committee and listening to him here in the House of Commons. I think there are some related issues. First of all, Conservatives want to green-light green projects, and we are going to do that by reducing timelines, reducing costs and reducing taxes to set the conditions for the private sector to be able to propose major projects, create jobs and fund their big projects. We also, at the same time, want to expand and accelerate traditional oil and gas in Canada, and exports, particularly to provide energy security, which is our moral obligation, I think, to free democracies around the world. What the Liberals are proposing is not a gradual shutdown of oil and gas in Canada; it is an ever-escalating agenda that they impose through a constant changing of the goal posts and constant new, unachievable targets. However, the other thing about the oil and gas sector is that it is far and away the leading private sector investor in clean tech, innovation, actual emissions reduction, habitat stewardship, wildlife preservation and reclamation. It is the sector that puts in the most private sector dollars that go into innovation in Canada right now. It is also the major sector that contributes the highest level of all for government revenue for anything it may be doing on that end and on programs and services that all Canadians depend on.
239 words
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border
  • Dec/4/23 5:56:26 p.m.
  • Watch
Madam Speaker, first of all, I actually already addressed the point in the previous 20 minutes, so I guess the member missed that. However, to talk about misrepresentation, of course, the study in committee that he is referring to had many witnesses. None of them called it “sustainable jobs”; they all called it “just transition”, which is why the Bloc is quite rightly asking why the Liberals have abandoned that language. The study in committee, of course, was not about the bill before us at all. Regardless, they introduced the bill before the committee was done its report and recommendations, so the entire thing is a charade by the member. I explained the concept of “globalist” and “globalism”. This is a very normal division in political philosophy. Globalism is the belief that economic and foreign policy should be planned globally and internationally—
151 words
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border
  • Dec/4/23 5:57:46 p.m.
  • Watch
Madam Speaker, perhaps this goes back to my more than 20 years of academic background in political philosophy. The word is not new; it is an absolutely normal ideological divide depending on perspectives of how policy, economic and foreign, decisions are to be made. What COP28 is doing right now is— An hon. member: Oh, oh! Mrs. Shannon Stubbs: Madam Speaker, can I just finish? He asked me the question and keeps interrupting.
74 words
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border
  • Dec/4/23 5:58:41 p.m.
  • Watch
Madam Speaker, maybe I will just summarize by saying that at COP28, they are globally discussing and planning for an economic policy, including, and chief among them, the just transition. Maybe the member should be a little more worried about the fact that the host of COP28 says, “There is no science out there, or no scenario out there, that says the phase-out of fossil fuel is what's going to achieve 1.5ºC.” He says, when people are asking for a phase-out of fossil fuels, “ Please help me. Show me...for a phase-out of fossil fuel that will allow for sustainable socioeconomic development, unless you want to take the world back into caves.” I hear them laughing, because they probably have a claim to make about green-washing, but they cannot stand up and justify all of their decisions based on COP28 on the one hand but then litigate it on the other.
163 words
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border
  • Dec/4/23 6:02:37 p.m.
  • Watch
Madam Speaker, all I would say to the member, who was sort of in and out of the committee, is that on October 30, when they tried to dictate the schedule for the committee, for the bills, Conservatives immediately countered with a compromised solution on the schedule. The NDP-Liberals then spent an entire month preoccupied and obsessed with censoring and kicking out Conservative members so we could not represent our constituents. That is why we are here today. I hope Canadians can see the very clear alternative visions. One is the end of oil and gas, and everything that goes with it. The other is a top-down, central planning of the economy with no transparency, no accountability and no clarity to Canadians about how much this has cost to date and how much it is going to cost in the future. This is very much the private sector versus the government. It is a philosophical divide. That is what is at play here, and this is, without a doubt, the end of days, the culmination of eight years of anti-energy, anti-private-sector and anti-development policy by the government.
193 words
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border
  • Dec/4/23 6:26:07 p.m.
  • Watch
  • Re: Bill C-50 
Madam Speaker, I respect the MP greatly even though we do come at the issue of the future of oil and gas development in Canada from diametrically opposed positions, which are probably in part ideological and probably in part because of who we represent. I wonder if the member might comment on the fact that Bill C-50 actually does not use the words “fair” or “just transition” in this bill, which is what it is really all about, and it is a heavy focus of international global conferences and efforts around the world. It is a concept that has been developed globally and pushed globally for many years. I wonder if the member has anything to say about that, or the fact that this bill actually, as he mentioned, does not include anything about jobs training or skills training. Also, if he could comment on the fact that it does deal with ending primary production in natural resources, which of course is provincial jurisdiction. I wonder if he has any comments about the NDP-Liberals being all over the map on those three things.
189 words
  • Hear!
  • Rabble!
  • star_border