Elizabeth May
Madam Speaker, we are debating Bill C-69, which is an omnibus bill that affects the new Canadian energy regulator, which was the National Energy Board; the Impact Assessment Act, which was the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act; and the navigable waters act.
Having practised environmental law for most of my life, I do not suppose she will believe me when I tell her, but I will try to tell her, that this bill is incredibly weak and does nothing to make development more difficult. It cannot possibly drive away investors unless they only want to put their money in countries where environmental assessment meets the minimum standards of rigour that Canada used to have between the early 1970s and 2012.
I do not suppose she is reassured, but I am voting against Bill C-69 because it is absolutely weak. I wonder if she has read it in detail and recognizes that it keeps in place most of what the previous government had done.
Rosemarie Falk – Member for Battlefords-Lloydminster
Mr. Speaker, I find my colleague’s question very interesting because of what just happened with Kinder Morgan. The government made it such an uncertain area of investment that it had to pay off Kinder Morgan to build the pipeline, or else it will not be done. I am not going to accuse the government of not building the pipeline. It has not been done yet. We have not seen anything happen to promote that, except that the government has thrown taxpayers’ money at companies that will take that investment elsewhere.