- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Lakeland
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $115,261.63
- Government Page
Mr. Speaker, I am grateful to speak today in support of Bill C-29, which would establish a national council for reconciliation.
It was, of course, the previous Conservative government that first launched the TRC, along with other measures that sought to better the outcomes and the lives of indigenous Canadians, especially indigenous youth, the fastest-growing group of young people in Canada.
Unfortunately, it must be said that the Liberals took far too long to bring in this bill, given they have been in power for seven years and that the Prime Minister claims the relationship with indigenous people is the most important to him.
That is why Conservatives pushed an amendment to ensure that it is the Prime Minister who will respond to the national council’s annual report, as the TRC’s call to action says, unlike the Liberals’ original draft, which delegated this responsibility to a minister.
That was just one improvement of the 19 substantial amendments from Conservatives to uphold the principles of transparency and independence, to increase accountability and accelerate the timelines for government responses, and, most importantly, to implement concrete, measurable targets and outcomes.
What is crucial is ensuring that good intentions and well-meaning words deliver actions and better outcomes. It is a testament to the good will, spirit of collaboration and shared aspirations that all parties supported 16 of the 19 Conservative amendments.
I am proud to represent nine indigenous communities in Lakeland, just as I am proud to represent every Canadian in the 52 communities across the region. As always, those people and those communities are foremost on my mind, so, like my neighbour from Fort McMurray—Cold Lake, I will address an extremely consequential Conservative amendment that was inexplicably rejected by the MPs of all the other parties. Conservatives wanted to ensure that one seat on the board of directors of the national council would be filled by an indigenous economic national organization.
It makes little sense to talk about mutual commitments between governments and citizens to tell the truth about historical, systemic and paternalistic injustices for societal reconciliation but to also simultaneously reject entrenching economic reconciliation as a priority so communities can move from managing poverty to generating prosperity. There are so many ways that can help resolve the disproportionate socio-economic challenges that indigenous people and communities face as a consequence of generations of oppressive and discriminatory government policies and programs.
This especially matters when it comes to ongoing challenges for indigenous leaders and entrepreneurs who want to secure jobs and create jobs, equity ownership, mutual benefit agreements and other economic opportunities in natural resources development. These are a main source of employment, and often the only source, for communities in rural and remote regions. It also matters in the public policy debates and duties around definitions of decision-makers, roles in consultation, consent and consensus, identity and local impacts.
In Lakeland, four of the nine indigenous communities are Métis settlements, half of all the settlements in Canada. They are unique to Alberta, with legislated Métis land bases, local governments and infrastructure costs, like water treatment facilities, roads and schools. They pay taxes, including carbon taxes.
For years I have pushed for their recognition, and I was finally able to get an indigenous and northern affairs committee report to cite them as “distinct entities with unique needs”.
In September I urged the Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations to include the settlements in Bill C-29, because it is an obvious hindrance to reconciliation if they are excluded from meaningful participation in the council, but I am still waiting for a response.
Representatives of the settlements in Lakeland often tell me they feel abandoned and forgotten by the government. Lee Thom, a Kikino Métis Settlement councillor, says that the Métis settlements must have a seat at that table to advocate for their indigenous communities, which are stand-alone and not a part of existing Métis nations in Alberta and nationally.
Still, the settlements have never been mentioned in a federal budget and are often excluded from federal initiatives. To me, this remains a glaring omission.
It is particularly relevant to the pursuit of economic reconciliation because the Métis settlements in Lakeland, along with most of the first nations, are currently, and have been, heavily involved in energy and natural resources development for decades. Many have previously met all their community needs with their own source revenue from their businesses and contracts.
The NDP's and Liberals' anti-energy agenda and aim to phase out oil and gas, which have already driven away investment, cost over $150 billion in lost projects and hundreds of thousands of jobs, have hit indigenous communities as hard as everyone else.
Last year, the indigenous and northern affairs committee tackled barriers to indigenous economic development. We heard from dozens of witnesses and one thing was clear: Empowering indigenous communities to set up businesses, develop their natural resources and create wealth for their communities and surrounding areas is crucial.
In later work, witnesses said that housing, health care, governance, infrastructure and emergency preparedness challenges all come back to the core concept of economic reconciliation. Several elected leaders from Lakeland participated.
Chief Gregory Desjarlais, of Frog Lake first nation, talked about the importance of access to capital to get projects built, like the carbon capture proposal led by Frog Lake and Kehewin, both in Lakeland. Frog Lake is heavily involved and invested in energy operations, whether through jobs or their community-owned Frog Lake Energy Resources Corp.
The benefits of indigenous-owned businesses are many. As Chief Desjarlais put it:
Look at these projects.... Look at indigenous ownership. If you involve the first nations, you allow them to build homes. You allow them to send kids to school. You allow them to send people to treatment. You allow them to deliver water to these homes. You allow them to remove mould. That's problem-solving. That's a takeaway, instead of all the money leaving Canada and still having poorer first nations living on CFAs and begging for handouts.
These benefits were echoed by Stan Delorme, chair of the Buffalo Lake Métis Settlement, as they would help to meet their major infrastructure needs for the disproportionate number of unemployed youth and to lift Buffalo Lake’s average annual income of $27,000 a year.
The ever-increasing carbon tax hurts them even more, as the cost of lumber, fuel, and home heating skyrockets, and the accessible oil and gas jobs that used to exist for them have disappeared because of the Liberals’ anti-energy agenda. Lee Thom says, “Our settlements are communities—living, breathing—with roads, schools and water, with everything that comes with a small municipality and are in dire need of funding.”
Those are three of the nine indigenous communities in Lakeland who are now part of the 23 communities that are now all proud owners of over a billion dollars' worth of pipelines in the Athabasca region.
Many other indigenous-led and indigenous-owned projects and partnership projects have been outright killed by this anti-energy government, like the Prime Minister’s unilateral veto of the northern gateway pipeline, which destroyed the aspirations of and all the work of 31 communities, which had mutual benefit agreements, and he did that without consultation, or all of the projects that are at risk by anti-energy policies and activists who threaten projects and are often not even from the locally impacted area.
The outright cancellation or the deliberate policy-driven delays to force private sector proponents to abandon major natural resources development and infrastructure projects have all been major concerns, and often totally devastating to numerous indigenous communities, leaders and business groups.
Those projects are opportunities for economic reconciliation. They are tools for indigenous communities to meet their core social and economic needs, invest in their cultures, and preserve and nurture their heritage and their languages for future generations.
For example, Chief Councillor Crystal Smith from Haisla Nation opposes Bill C-48, the shipping and export ban, and supports Coastal GasLink as a way to bring her community out of poverty.
Last week, Calvin Helin, an indigenous author and entrepreneur, said that what really irks indigenous Canadians involved in responsible resource development is the meddling and interference from “eco-colonialists”, these groups whose only interest is in stopping projects, and government interference where the government is only listening to the side of the project that supports their politics.
There are countless examples of the Liberal government trampling on indigenous Canadians’ work and hope, roadblocking their pursuit of self-determination, including Eva Clayton of the Nisga’a, whose LNG export facility is on hold because of Liberal red tape; Natural Law Energy, 20 prairie first nations who lost a billion-dollar investment opportunity when Keystone XL was cancelled due to Liberal inaction; the Lax Kw’alaams, who are litigating against the Liberals’ Bill C-48 export ban, which violated their rights and title and ruined their plans for a deep-water port and oil export facility without consulting them; and the 35 indigenous communities with the Eagle Spirit Energy Corridor proposal, whose work and hopes for economic benefits were quashed by Bill C-69, the no more pipelines act.
The Liberals and the anti-energy activists’ anti-resource, anti-business and anti-energy agenda, usually outside and far away from the local indigenous communities, sabotages all their efforts to benefit from natural resources development and to participate in their local economies.
These actions look a lot like those of a centralist, colonialist government imposing its views against the goals and priorities of the majority of directly impacted indigenous people and leaders, like those in Lakeland.
While Conservatives will support this bill, the Liberals still need to fix their own paternalism that prevents economic reconciliation to ensure that indigenous voices, not just those that align with Liberal political priorities, are all represented in reconciliation efforts.
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Mr. Speaker, on behalf of the member for Regina—Lewvan and colleagues right across Manitoba, Alberta and Saskatchewan, I will respond to the private member's bill, Bill C-235, from the member for Winnipeg South Centre.
I first wanted to say that I really respect the member. I enjoy working opposite to and sometimes constructively with him. Most of all, I am sincerely heartened to see him here and in good health.
My own background is, of course, a rural prairie one. I grew up near a village of about 200 people. My husband and I live and raise horses where he grew up a mile west of a town of fewer than 1,500 people, so no matter where I go or what I do, I am always a rural Alberta farm girl at heart.
As an MP, I have fought non-stop for farmers, for farm families, for oil and gas workers, for responsible resource development, for rural and indigenous communities and against burdensome government red tape, taxes and barriers to rural life. I am grateful to our interim leader for her friendship, counsel and confidence and for the opportunity to focus on rural economic development and rural broadband in the months ahead.
Right off the top, let me share the general view of prairie residents, especially rural people and those in Lakeland. The federal government in Ottawa is very far away, very expensive and very slow to respond. It does not get the realities or the priorities of prairie life, and the very best way the federal government can help the Prairies to develop and diversify their economies, to create jobs and to reduce emissions is to get out of the way. We are already doing it.
I know this member is sincere in his intentions to increase collaboration between all levels of government and indigenous communities, but it will instead add the very layer of bureaucracy that often stifles economic development initiatives or private sector projects, partnerships and investments in the first place.
A framework to enhance consultation sounds commendable. The reality will be a complex bureaucratic process spanned across three provinces and at least five federal departments, dragged out over a year and a half, just to create a plan that is likely to mostly feature predetermined federal Liberal government ideology and goals. While effective and timely collaboration does not always happen in practice, this attempt to create yet another layer of red tape is, and ought to be, unnecessary. There is nothing stopping federal and provincial ministers, existing departments and public servants from working together on any and every policy area that overlaps and impacts each other already. The fact that an MP thinks it is necessary to legislate such practice is actually an indictment on the status quo approach of current governments and politicians, and maybe even senior levels of departments and regulatory bodies.
I think most Canadians expect that this sort of work is already happening regularly and that it should not take a new law and a long drawn-out process to get it done. As someone who has worked in a provincial public service primarily focused on energy, environment and economic development policies and issues, I can say first-hand that it is eminently possible and reasonable for public servants to work in cross-departmental and cross-provincial capacities with the federal government, along with a variety of private sector and indigenous partners, and to achieve real outcomes.
A federally imposed, top-down, drawn-out legislated bureaucratic process is not necessary and is most likely to be long on meetings, procedures and reports, but short on deliverables, outcomes and actual economic or environmental results. Instead of accepting that yet another legislative- and administrative-heavy framework is what is required, it seems to me the ministers, departments and each level of government should both demand and do better. I believe that timely accountability is what most Canadians expect too.
On top of that, frankly, I think what the member is trying to remedy in his bill is already happening in the provinces to which it applies. It seems to be a solution in search of a problem. Most notably in the Prairies and across Canada, provinces have created and already implemented working plans to reduce emissions and enhance environmental protection. These are both programs that enable more R and D and innovation to advance energy technologies and energy efficiency through seed funding or private-public partnerships, and specific programs designed to increase indigenous participation in economic opportunities, both as partners and as owners, by increasing the capacity for indigenous and Métis communities to participate in regulatory processes, and to advance economic reconciliation by enabling indigenous people to secure more significant, long-term economic opportunities to build legacies of prosperity and self-sufficiency for future generations through increased access to capital. The duty to consult on major federal resource projects or related infrastructure is of course an explicit federal responsibility, and it should focus on getting that right.
Therefore, it seems to me that an obvious unintended consequence of this bill is that it could actually undermine the extensive work already being done across the country, and particularly in the Prairies already leading the way, by municipal and provincial governments, indigenous communities, utilities and the private sector. Instead of this “Ottawa knows best” approach to formalize oversight across three provinces and to federally wag the dog on their respective approaches to environmental stewardship, the federal government would do well to identify all the ways in which federal programs, rules and taxes overlap, duplicate, contradict and add costs and administrative burdens to entrepreneurs, resource developers and farmers.
The federal government would do better to listen to private sector proponents and indigenous communities, which say the regulatory burden the Liberals have created in Canada is politicized, onerous, punitive and driving away billions of dollars in projects and hundreds of thousands of jobs in the very sectors this bill focuses on, because it is so disproportionate from competitor jurisdictions and economies that nothing can get built here. The federal government would do better to listen to innovators and fix the major problem in Canada that they call the valley of death, where years of risk-taking, innovation, collaboration, creativity, inventiveness, research and development, and money go to die before ever making it to real commercialized, usable, feasible technology in Canada, making innovators go elsewhere. The federal government must maintain high standards in its key areas of responsibility, obviously, but otherwise should get itself out of the way of local and provincial governments that know their jurisdictions best and out of the way of private sector proponents, entrepreneurs and innovators, who know their sectors best.
Let us face reality. It is safe to say that the majority of people in the prairie provinces, where the major economic drivers are agriculture, mining and gas and oil extraction, and which are home to 62% of employment in Canada's egg activities and food processing and 19% of Canada's resource-based employment, are rightly skeptical and suspicious about the current federal government's intentions and actions. The Liberals' high-taxing, anti-energy, anti-resource development, anti-private sector legislative and regulatory approach has killed pipelines, driven away billions of dollars' worth of business and indigenous-partnered projects in oil, mining, natural gas and LNG development, and initiatives for more Canadian resource exports. Their approach has stuck 20 billion dollars' worth of resource and critical infrastructure proposals on idle in their cumbersome and prohibitive-by-design regulatory framework. The point really should be efficient, transparent, fair, objective and evidence-based due diligence in consultation, while maintaining Canada's world-class standards, not checking off boxes with ever-changing rules over the years and then not being certain a project can go ahead if it does get the green light. All of that has really done more to stifle innovation, R and D, technology advances and economic development and diversification in the Prairies than anything else.
This, of course, is at the heart of the matter. It is the fundamental difference in the world views and the approaches between the Liberals and the Conservatives and perhaps, really, between Ottawa and the Prairies.
The most significant private sector investors in clean tech; in emissions reduction; in new, renewable and alternative energy technologies; in solar, wind and green hydrogen projects; and in others areas are existing oil and gas, oil sands and pipeline companies. All kinds of government bodies at all levels, and utility companies, are currently shovelling millions of taxpayer and ratepayer dollars into pilots for what they call the energy transition. However, in real terms with real outcomes, it is actually the private sector energy and resource companies that have long been leading efforts on emissions reduction, technological adaptation and mitigation, energy efficiency, and environmental stewardship and remediation, without risking billions in tax dollars.
It is also true that initial academic and government partnerships with seed funding and favourable regulatory approaches were important to starting major developments that benefit all of Canada and spinoff employment in multiple other sectors like the oil sands. This is 100% true in agricultural industries and among egg producers too, so it is strange that this bill does not actually include egg production at all. I notice this is a PMB seven years in, so one wonders how much of a priority it is to the government.
The fact that the heavy lifting and real leadership in emissions reduction and green technology advancements come from the private sector should not be a surprise to anyone. However, the federal government does often seem to be unaware. It stifles the very work and outcomes it says it wants to achieve, in favour of top-down, high-cost, complicated, low-results big government.
People in the Prairies, and especially in Lakeland, are not inclined to welcome the “I'm from the government and I'm here to help” mentality, and for many, many good reasons, so notwithstanding this respected member's goodwill and positive aspirations, the Conservatives will oppose Bill C-235.
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