- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Lakeland
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 67%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $115,261.63
- Government Page
Madam Speaker, I want to thank my colleague from Nova Scotia for addressing this legislation and for speaking the truth about the negative impacts it would have on both offshore petroleum development and the future of renewable offshore development.
I wonder if he would expand on how disastrous it would be to proceed with Bill C-49 now, given that sections from Bill C-69, sections 61, 62 and 64, which are all embedded in Bill C-69, have now been declared by the Supreme Court of Canada, on Friday, to be largely unconstitutional.
I wonder if he would expand on exactly the perils of proceeding with this legislation, which they are rushing through on time allocation, given that we would all know that we were passing a bill with significant clauses that are unconstitutional.
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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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Madam Speaker, Canadians are out of money and the fall economic statement shows that the Liberals are out of touch. Almost half of Canadians are $200 or less away from bankruptcy, cannot cover their living expenses this year, cannot save for the future and are cutting back on healthy food. A quarter of Canadian households cannot cover monthly bills and debt repayment.
It is appalling that the Prime Minister doubled Canada’s debt and said that the government “took on debt so Canadians wouldn't have to.” Canadians are now paying the staggering price for his reckless decisions, and he has added more debt than all previous prime ministers in Canadian history combined.
He claims that all the new spending was because of COVID, but over $200 billion of it had nothing to do with COVID. All that spending has created record-high inflation that is driving up the cost of everything, and essentials such as gas, groceries and home heating are almost out of reach. The fall statement does nothing to alleviate these burdens on struggling Canadians. With record debt, record inflation and, as it turns out, record taxes, Canadians pay more taxes now than ever before, and actually pay more in taxes than for food, clothing and shelter combined.
The fall statement shows that the Liberals are going to make things worse and will keep racking up debt to fuel their spending. Of course, they plan to triple the carbon tax too. The fall economic statement is an insult to hard-working Canadians struggling just to get by, never mind trying to actually get ahead.
The Conservatives asked the Liberals to commit to tackling inflation and the skyrocketing cost of living by ensuring they would bring in no new taxes and no new spending. They ignored both and will only fuel the skyrocketing cost of living fire they set.
As is the government's pattern, the fall statement undermines Canada's natural resources sector, which bolsters the entire economy and is a leading contributor to GDP, jobs, government revenue and closing the gap between the wealthy and poor in Canada. While the Prime Minister recently said Russia's attack on Ukraine has accelerated his government's effort to phase out oil and gas, the finance minister recently claimed that Canada is ready to “support our allies with energy security”. She claims it will be easier for businesses to invest in major projects in Canada, but the reality is that the Liberal record is one of deliberate policy uncertainty, unpredictability and added red tape and costs that drive businesses, jobs and money out of Canada.
Oil and gas is Canada’s biggest private sector investor and lead export, even now. However, the NDP-Liberals’ anti-energy agenda has already had stark consequences: 300,000 jobs lost, over $150 billion in energy projects and indigenous partnerships cancelled and four pipelines dead. They would have enabled Canadian energy security and self-sufficiency and would have exported more Canadian energy to the world.
Shockingly, under the Liberals, 25 LNG export projects have been stalled or abandoned, risking 100,000 jobs and $500 billion in new investment. In the same time, the U.S. built seven and approved 20 more, while only one in Canada, with the biggest private sector investment in Canadian history and approved under the former Conservative government, has shovels in the ground. In Germany, a major LNG import facility was just permitted and built in 194 days. They wanted Canadian LNG but cannot get it because of the Liberals. How many times was LNG cited in the fall economic statement? It was zero.
The finance minister talks about accelerating project approvals, but her government has actually done everything it can to slow them down or destroy them completely. She even said that Canada must and will fast-track “the energy and mining projects our allies need to heat their homes and to manufacture electric vehicles.” However, this fall statement actually eliminates incentives for small-scale energy start-ups, picks winners and losers in resource development and would make energy in Canada for Canadians more and more expensive.
The fall statement outlines an incoming 2% tax on buybacks of a company’s own stock. That would harm Canadian investment because it is double the rate of the U.S. It would cause Canadian businesses and investments to continue to move south.
The NDP-Liberals will also get rid of flow-through shares, which are a major source of start-up capital for many oil, gas, and predominantly mining projects. Cancelling them only for oil and gas would hurt small businesses, especially those investing in alternative energy and emissions-reduction technology, because 93% of oil and gas companies in Canada have under 100 employees. They face high costs, high uncertainty, high risk and domestic political hostility, so private investment is already a challenge.
Get this. In 2020, the then natural resources minister expanded flow-through shares to help small companies build stronger supply chains, including for critical minerals. However, this fall economic statement cuts them, so by their own admission, it is jeopardizing supply chains that are already severely compromised.
Liberal claims and policies are incoherent, contradictory and hypocritical. The finance minister's delivery of the fall statement mentioned “critical minerals” five times and she claims they are a priority. They should be a key pillar of Canada's resource future, but so far there is only talk. In reality, critical minerals in Canada such as nickel, lithium and uranium will stay in the ground because mining approvals take several years, duplicate provincial and municipal reviews and can be paused or get new conditions at any time. Canada currently produces no phosphate, a key component in electric car batteries. The Liberals say they want all new vehicle sales to be zero emissions by 2035, but phosphate is not even on Canada’s critical minerals list.
The gap between words and actions is not surprising, though. It is the Liberals' modus operandi on almost everything. Instead of actually fixing the regulatory mess they created, the Liberals drive Canada deeper into debt and announce more tax dollars to fund their broken programs. The fall statement seems to admit it because the Liberals plan to pour $1.28 billion into the various resource regulators.
The Liberals should be ashamed that this is necessary, since Canada was consistently world renowned for decades as the most responsible resource producer with the highest standards and performance and a best-in-class regulatory system by all measures. It was literally the best in the world out of the top ten resource-producing jurisdictions on the planet before the Liberals broke it. The only way the Liberals seem to get companies to pursue new major projects is by bankrolling them with tax dollars. Layers of red tape and duplication and an unclear and arbitrary review process cause investors to seek opportunities outside of Canada.
Unlike the Liberals, the Conservatives would remove unnecessary roadblocks and duplication, attract investment and accelerate approvals for resource projects that are crucial to economic and national security, while maintaining the highest global standards. The Conservatives would ensure things can actually get built in this country.
A Conservative government would axe the carbon tax, repeal the anti-energy, anti-business and anti-export bills and get more of Canada’s world-leading environmentally and socially responsible oil, gas and minerals to the world to displace these products from countries with lower environmental, human rights, labour and governance standards.
The Conservatives will put the people first. Instead of government creating cash and making everything more expensive, the Conservatives will make sure Canada creates more of what cash buys: more homes, more gas, more food and more resources here at home—
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- May/11/22 2:39:30 p.m.
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Mr. Speaker, the truth is zero pipelines have been proposed or built under the Liberals, and they have killed billions in projects and hundreds of thousands of jobs. The PM ignored experts, workers, indigenous leaders and investors in every province and territory on Bill C-69. The court said it is a “profound invasion” that places a chokehold on provinces. It called it a “wrecking ball” that “smacks of paternalism” and overrides indigenous agreements. It is uncertain, unpredictable, unquantifiable and unreliable, just like Conservatives warned. Therefore, instead of wasting more time and tax dollars to appeal, will he just repeal Bill C-69?
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