- Member of Parliament
- Member of Parliament
- Conservative
- Lakeland
- Alberta
- Voting Attendance: 68%
- Expenses Last Quarter: $115,261.63
- Government Page
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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