I would like to pay a brief moment of tribute to the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration as the only minister I know of in the current cabinet who shows up for every debate on all of his bills and answers all the questions. It is quite extraordinary.

However, I do not believe it is in the interest of democracy to continue to limit debate and impose time allocation.

I briefly want to note these words of former Speaker John Fraser from 1989, which were cited in the Speaker’s ruling of December 12 last year in the House, “We are a parliamentary democracy, not a so-called executive democracy, nor a so-called administrative democracy”.

In a real parliamentary democracy, we have full debates. It is not delay; it is called democracy.

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I want to thank the hon. minister for being more flexible and willing to take on changes to this legislation and other legislation in the 41st Parliament, but there is more that should be done on this bill before we are finished with it.

Hon. Jason Kenney: Madam Speaker, I appreciate the member’s evident concern and the fact that she takes the deliberative legislative process very seriously.

I would submit to her that there is a deadline of June 29. There has been an enormous amount of debate. To address her question, the reason why there will be more limited debate on report stage for consideration of amendments in this place is, I would argue, because there was so much debate at second reading and so much consideration at committee, which had 15 meetings, over 43 hours of study, heard from 109 witnesses and considered dozens of amendments.

I know the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands is at a disadvantage because, as an independent member, she does not have a seat on committees. For her that is an unfortunate reality of the rules of this place. I can assure her that many of the amendments that she intends to propose at report stage were considered by the committee following its exhaustive study clause by clause. These ideas have been given full consideration.

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1. the said bill may be read twice or thrice in one sitting;
2. not more than two hours shall be allotted for the consideration of the second reading stage of the said bill, following the adoption of this Order;
3. when the bill has been read a second time, it shall be referred to a Committee of the Whole;
4. any division requested in the Committee shall be deferred until the end of the Committee’s consideration of the Bill;
5. not more than one hour shall be allotted for the consideration of the Committee of the Whole stage of the said bill;
6. not more than one half hour shall be allotted for the consideration of the third reading stage of the said bill, provided that no Member shall speak for more than ten minutes at a time during the said stage and that no period for questions and comments be permitted following each Member’s speech;
7. at the expiry of the times provided for in this Order, any proceedings before the House or the Committee of the Whole shall be interrupted, if required for the purpose of this Order, and, in turn, every question necessary for the disposal of the stage, then under consideration, of the said bill shall be put and disposed of forthwith and successively, without further debate or amendment, and no division shall be deferred;
8. when the Speaker has, for the purposes of this Order, interrupted any proceeding for the purpose of putting forthwith the question on any business then before the House, the bells to call in the Members shall ring for not more than thirty minutes;
9. commencing when the said bill is read a first time and concluding when the said bill is read a third time, the House shall not adjourn except pursuant to a motion proposed by a Minister of the Crown;
10. no motion to adjourn the debate at any stage of the said bill may be proposed except by a Minister of the Crown; and
11. during the consideration of the said bill in the Committee of the Whole, no motion that the Committee rise or that the Committee report progress may be proposed except by a Minister of the Crown.

Elizabeth May: Mr. Speaker, we are debating time allocation on a bill we have not yet seen. We have a sense of déjà vu. We also debated time allocation on a bill we had not seen with regard to the Air Canada pilots strike. In this light, I noted the hon. member called the current approach of the Minister of Labour predictable. My concern is that it is predictable to management as well as to those of us on the opposition benches. As it is predictable to management, it decreases the likelihood of collective bargaining rights being respected and collective bargaining working.

Does the hon. member for Winnipeg North share my concern?

Kevin Lamoureux: Mr. Speaker, there is no doubt it is an attitude issue. In good part, the government has brought in legislation that would have a very serious and severe impact on thousands of workers. This talks volumes about the government’s ability or desire to have a fair process. The government’s track record has demonstrated that it is not prepared to ensure that the system is fair. The legislation being brought in and the manner in which it is being brought in does not surprise me. This is a government that has moved some form of time allocation some 20-plus times since it achieved its majority government in just over a year, which is unprecedented. People of all political stripes in the House should be concerned.

It is time Conservative backbenchers start reining in the Prime Minister and their cabinet. Collectively, they could have a voice if they chose to use It.

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My concern is with the approach that the government House leader has taken. We find ourselves on the day of a vote that was not previously on notice. We had notice yesterday of time allocation but we had no idea if it was two or three or four days. There will be extensive votes tonight because there are a lot of substantive amendments to be reviewed.

It would show more respect to opposition members and to all parties in the House if the government House leader were to allow bills to have proper notice. People have plans, such as a charity event in memory of my daughter’s best friend. I am sorry to bring up a personal matter. We all sacrifice things so we can stay in the House for late votes. More notice would have shown more respect.

Hon. James Moore: Mr. Speaker, I feel awful for the personal circumstances of the leader of the Green Party. I compliment her for her substantive approach to this legislation. She tabled her amendments and we did consider them in previous processes.

To put it bluntly, at some point we have to call the question. After two years, it is time to call the question. Canadians, consumers and organizations require this legislation in order to have certainty in the digital age so that they can move forward.

I have a long list of organizations that support this legislation, not all aspects of the bill because it is a balancing act, but support key elements of this legislation to ensure that it goes forward. For example, the Canadian Alliance of Student Associations said that the government has demonstrated a commitment to Canada’s education community, that students across Canada are greatly encouraged by this legislation and that the government has a clear understanding of how this bill will impact Canada’s students, educators and researchers.

I have a great deal of respect for the member for Saanich—Gulf Islands in the way that she has approached this legislation in a substantive way. After two and a half years of consideration, two years of debate on the specific bill, it is time to call the question.

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I am sad because this bill is worse than any other this Parliament has debated, and that is for two reasons.

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First, without consulting Canadians, the government chose to introduce sweeping changes to many laws that affect environmental, social and economic aspects of Canadian life. This approach is illegitimate and outrageous. The process is unacceptable and an offence to true democracy.

Second, beyond the process that is so offensive, the bill that purports to be a budget bill is, in substance, something quite different. The substance of the changes is equally alarming.

Laws this bad take some explanation. As I have sat through the truncated debate on this process at second reading, what we have had are presentations from the Conservative MPs providing lists of things they like in the legislation, and presentations from the opposition benches providing lists of things we do not like in the legislation. That leaves out a big piece of the puzzle.

We have also been confusing measures that are a budget measures that are not in Bill C-38, things like fighting the deficit. There are things we do not like, like killing the Centre for Plant Health in my own riding, which is necessary to protect the health of the economy, particularly in the grape growing regions and wineries, and killing jobs in national parks, again in my riding of Saanich—Gulf Islands, the Gulf Islands National Park jobs in ecological work.

However, again, these are not in Bill C-38. The debate has been combatting lists. We like this and we hate this.

I want to step back and try to understand what is going on here. Why do we have this enormous package of measures, most of the substantial changes being those that unravel environmental law in our country? 

I have been involved in the development of most of the laws that we now see being unravelled, particularly the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy Act. What I see behind all this is a shift in mindset.

I worked in the Mulroney government. The Progressive Conservatives understood that conserving involved conserving the environment. This is not necessarily the current mindset of the current brand of conservatism, which I find alien from the traditions and roots of people like former fisheries ministers John Fraser and Tom Siddon. Both have spoken out against the devastating changes to the protection of fish habitat in Bill C-38 and the unintended consequences that this will surely have.

This mindset reminds me most of what the former senior economist to the World Bank, Herman Daly, used to describe as “treating the earth as a business in liquidation”, an everything must go mentality and it must be done fast. He offered the opposite view. He said that we needed to understand that the economy was a wholly owned subsidiary of the environment, that these things were not in conflict and that it was so wrong-headed to say that we would only get jobs if we destroyed the environment. It boggles the mind.

When we understand that this is the way this entire omnibus budget bill has been prepared, then it begins to make sense. Then we understand the narrative and then we can understand that someone in the PMO picked up the phone, called the Department of Justice or maybe just sent an email, said that it should find all those things for which the federal government is responsible for the environment and find ways to withdraw from them to the maximum extent possible without offending constitutional requirements to protect such things as migratory birds, because we have a convention with the U.S., or fisheries, because that is in the Constitution.

For example, there is no other way to understand why the Conservatives repealed the Environmental Assessment Act and put in place an entirely new act. Most of what we have heard is that they wanted to have timely assessments. I do not think there would be much debate over that.

In 2005 I proposed to the minister of the environment that in order to get a review of the proposed cleanup at the Sydney tar ponds, which itself presented risks, a timeline would be a good idea. In fact, a 12-month timeline was put in place for the joint review panel of the cleanup proposed for the Sydney tar ponds back in 2005. That could be done under the existing legislation. We do not need to repeal the act and start over.

To all these complaints, the Conservatives claim that industry was demanding this be done, I have in front of me a briefing note from the Mining Association of Canada from January of this year in which it praises the current process under Environmental Assessment Review. It says, “the amendments that the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act made in 2010 were implemented quickly and competently by the agency” and it has “provided mining project proponents with relief”. It says that for the first time “provincial and federal assessments are synchronized”. This is from the Mining Association of Canada, allegedly one of the interest groups for whom the Conservative government is destroying all of our environmental laws. The Mining Association of Canada says, “our primary interest in the review of the Environmental Assessment Act is to convey support for the new system brought in…and to renew funding for the Environmental Assessment Agency”.

It is critical to understand that the government did not have to repeal the Environmental Assessment Act in order to have a process that worked for all the players. It looks as though this desperate attempt to be in a hurry is where the problem lies. What the government has done is so egregious. The Environmental Assessment Act being repealed and replaced with a whole new scheme that will never get proper review through the process we have in an omnibus project.

The Conservatives are removing what had always been a federal trigger for a proper environmental assessment, if federal money was being spent. That is no longer there. They are removing comprehensive studies. They are no longer there.

There is no real definition of what an environmental assessment would be. We have a reference in the budget document to something called a “standard environmental assessment”, but Bill C-38 has removed all definitions of what the process would look like.

Killing the comprehensive studies and creating panels that can be substituted with the province without criteria, in my view, would have the industry coming to government asking what it had done as the process had worked pretty well. In fact, the Mining Association of Canada says, “very well”. Now we will not know what project has to go to review or what project does not, when we go to the province or when we do not.

At the same time, in order to unravel the federal responsibilities that trigger an environmental assessment, the government has created a crazy scheme for fisheries. It still requires a permit to add substances “deleterious” to fish, but the protections for fish habitat have been removed.

This means, and as we all know this is a real-life example, that if one wanted to have a large-scale project, for instance, to put tailings into an existing lake, we would be better off, if the lake were in a remote area where no one fishes, to drain the whole lake, kill all the fish and destroy the habitat because that would be legal without an authorization. Whereas adding substances “deleterious” to fish into a lake currently would require authorization. This is the ultimate example of haste makes waste.

The bill has not properly contemplated the changes to the Fisheries Act, the Environmental Assessment Act, or the changes to the Species at Risk Act. The bill is out of control through the false notion that we will create jobs through waste and haste.

I remind people that it is now 20 years since the Westray disaster in which 26 men died. There was no environmental review at that time, as it was back in 1988 when the project was approved, but there were warnings. The experts in the department of mines said that the area was too high in methane, but no, the local politicians and some federal politicians wanted those jobs. They wanted them so badly that they overrode expert advice. They said that they had to get that Westray mine built come hell or high water, that they would do it and that they did not want to hear complaints about causes or what might happen to get in the way. Therefore, federal money flowed. We created a bomb and put men in it, and 26 men died.

Now we are creating another kind of bomb. The first speaker on the bill was not the Minister of Finance, but the Minister of Natural Resources who brought forward all the reasons to change the scheme. He said that we must hurry as there was no time to waste. He quoted from the International Energy Agency on the current state of fossil fuel requirements around the world, but he never quoted the warning from the International Energy Agency that if we did not act on the climate crisis, it would soon be too late. The quote from the International Energy Agency from earlier this year is this, “Delaying action is a false economy. As each year passes without clear signals to drive investment in clean energy, the ‘lock-in’ of high-carbon infrastructure is making it harder and more expensive to meet our energy security and climate goals”. We must change direction. This bill is putting pedal to the metal to go as fast as possible to a very large brick wall.

Going back to the bomb we built for the men at Westray, we are now building a climate bomb, a carbon bomb. The proposed legislation is so wrong-headed it must be withdrawn in its entirety.

The post Jobs, Growth and Long-Term Prosperity Act (Bill C-38) appeared first on Elizabeth May.

Hon. John McCallum: Mr. Speaker, absolutely not. I have been here since 2001 and we have had budget implementation bills but nothing on the scale of 70 pieces of legislation being changed and debate being shortened in this way. This is truly an unprecedented move in Canada.

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What does the hon. member for Bonavista—Gander—Grand Falls—Windsor do, as a parliamentarian, when items that were never part of a budget are in a budget implementation bill? The destruction of the federal Fisheries Act was not even hinted at in that budget. How does the Conservative Party get away with sticking it in an omnibus bill when it was not even mentioned in the budget itself?

Scott Simms: Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague. I find her situation in the House very similar to the Conservative party, and this is the only comparison I draw between the Green party and the Conservative party in the House; they are both a party of one.

However, in this particular situation, she is right because so much of this material was not even brought up as a preliminary discussion in the beginning. Let us go back to the Fisheries Act. The Conservatives attempted to bring in a brand new Fisheries Act years ago, under Loyola Hearn. What is in there now was not even discussed then, when they had a chance to bring in a new act, let alone now.

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The mainstream media is marking its report cards for the one-year anniversary under Harper Conservative majority rule. The bromides are calming—the Globe and Mail editorial gives the Conservative majority a positive spin—“more ups than downs”—while its reporter, John Ibbitson, wrote a piece nearly oozing with reverence for the prime minister.

It is clear we all have our biases. I only entered politics back in 2006 because I feared what a Harper minority government would do to decades of environmental law and policy. I have been very critical of the cuts to climate science, retreat from Kyoto commitments, and sabotage of climate negotiations internationally since 2006. But with that bias out in the open, I believe the last year has been the most devastating in Canadian history for parliamentary democracy, for charter rights, to collective bargaining and trade union rights, for evidence-based public policy, and for environmental law and protection. And, of course, the damage to climate policy was accelerated.

Here’s the evidence:

1. Abuse of democracy: Every piece of government legislation introduced since the election has had time allocation applied to limit debate, smashing through historical records. Parliamentary committees have been meeting increasingly in secret. Omnibus legislation, forcing massive legislative changes through one bill, has been used, further depriving Parliament of adequate time to analyze and improve legislation. The auditor general’s report on the F-35 issue makes it clear that Parliament was not given accurate information about the cost of the fighter jets, even after the true cost was known within cabinet. No need to detail here the simmering scandal of electoral fraud and robocalls.
2. Charter rights: The omnibus crime bill included nine separate pieces of legislation. Many sections involving mandatory minimum sentences arguably violate the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. As well, the new refugee law, C-31, will require political refugee claimants arriving by boat (or anything the minister deems as “irregular entry”) to face automatic internment for up to a year without access to judicial review. This will include children between 16 and 18.
3. Collective bargaining: The intervention by the federal Parliament into Air Canada labour disputes (twice) and Canada Post’s lock-out of its workers undermines labour rights. So, too, does the Conservative party-supported private member’s bill to impose more financial transparency on labour unions than on other professional groupings, such as law societies.
4. Control of information: The Harper majority government has been the most closed and non-transparent in history. The number of people working in the Prime Minister’s Office has expanded, with its now over $10 million per year budget. Most of the PMO staff are described as “information officers”. Their job is to block access to information. No public servants or government scientists can speak to the media without permission; neither can they speak to MPs.
5. Evidence-free decision making: Once again the omnibus crime bill must be mentioned. A “tough on crime” agenda was unhinged from the reality of falling crime rates. No amount of evidence from criminologists that mandatory minimums do not reduce crime rates, nor that it was unwise to pass the bill without estimates for the cost of new prisons, made a dent in the Conservative majority mantra that any opposition MP who objected was siding with criminals and showed no concern for victims. The budgetary cuts are now disproportionately targeting Statistics Canada. Who can deny that the Harper brand of Conservatism is an evidence-free zone?
6. Assault on the natural world: The gloves are off. Harper and company have taken aim at environmental groups and First Nations opposed to the Enbridge supertanker scheme calling them “radicals” and labelling MPs who oppose the project as “against Canada”. While selling out our resources to China, without national security checks, Stephen Harper has promised Beijing the Enbridge project will proceed. In order to achieve this goal, come hell or high water, environmental laws are being eviscerated. And the sweeping changes are concealed in C-38, the budget implementation bill. The National Energy Board will now have jurisdiction over endangered species and navigable waters, if they occur in the way of any proposed pipeline. Meanwhile, the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act is repealed (under C-38) with an entirely new approach to replace it. The new law will restrict the study of impacts of major projects to areas “under the legislative authority of Parliament”—confined to fish and migratory birds. Where, in the past, an environmental review at the federal level was the most rigorous and comprehensive, new federal reviews would be a joke by Third World standards. The removal of habitat protection under the Fisheries Act is also part of the budget bill. So too, repealing the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act and the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy Act. Meanwhile, $8 million has been freed up to harass environmental charities.

Canadians must not remain silent. It is not only one area of public policy or one ecosystem that is threatened. Canada, our values and our traditions, are at risk.

Elizabeth May is the leader of the Green Party of Canada and the MP for Saanich-Gulf Islands.

Originally published in the Georgia Straight.

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The reason is not that we are trying to delay. We are trying to have a full discussion that will explore the benefits and, potentially, ways to improve the government’s legislation. It is called democracy. It is not about delay. It is about having a full hearing. We are all elected here as members of Parliament and, in the theory of Westminster parliamentary democracy, we are equals, but we feel as though we are the ground over which the government bulldozes and we really do not think that it is appropriate.

Hon. Peter Van Loan: Madam Speaker, the approach of our government is very simple. We make commitments to Canadians and we seek to deliver on them. Our priority is jobs and economic growth and the long-term economic security of Canadians. We are working to deliver on that. We want to present legislation and we do. We present it in election, allow for a full debate and then we present it in the House and allow for debate here.

We think that debate is important and that it has something to offer but we also insist that we need to come to a point where we make decisions. People in this House should have the right to vote and in about half an hour we will ask the members of this House if they want the opportunity to vote on this bill. Are they prepared to allow two more days of debate and then to have a vote on the bill? It is a reasonable proposal, a reasonable approach. Let us avoid the political paralysis of Europe and the United States.

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What used to be the exception to the rule appears to now be the rule.

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Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

Ms. Elizabeth May: I am only sitting because I cannot be heard.

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

The Speaker: Order, please. We will hear the rest of the question.

The hon. member for Saanich—Gulf Islands.

Ms. Elizabeth May: Mr. Speaker, my question is for the government House leader. Can we again restore a parliamentary tradition that limits on debates occur when matters are urgent or otherwise justified and do not become routine?

Hon. Peter Van Loan: Mr. Speaker, in the last election Canadians gave us a strong mandate to deliver on jobs for Canadians–

Some hon. members: Oh, oh!

The Speaker: Order, order. The House wanted to hear the question and I am sure the House wants to hear the answer. The Chair wants to hear the answer.

The hon. government House leader.

Hon. Peter Van Loan: Mr. Speaker, Canadians asked us to deliver on tackling crime, on creating jobs for Canadians, on restoring the democratic principle of each vote having equal value on a range of commitments, and we are delivering on those commitments.

But what has happened each and every time is that the opposition has brought in a motion to stop debate, to say those bills should not go to committee, they should not go past second reading.

We will not stand for that. We will deliver on our commitments and ensure that the House has a chance to decide and debate these issues thoroughly at every stage.

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