Speech on Bill C-69

11 December 2018 – Senator Wallin’s Speech on Bill C-69, An Act to enact the Impact Assessment Act and the Canadian Energy Regulator Act

I would like to add my voice to the debate on Bill C-69, An Act to enact the Impact Assessment Act and the Canadian Energy Regulator Act, to amend the Navigation Protection Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts.

There are many concerns about the impact and intent of this bill. It has become a focal point for an entire industry and for the families and communities who are connected to the energy sector.

I know this bill hasn’t caused the crisis in the oil sector, but Ottawa’s attitude, some of its actions and intentions on the energy file have led to a growing sense of frustration, anger, resentment and a profound disconnect, particularly in my part of the world, with those who govern this country.

To be clear, I’m not talking about western separation movements or predictable partisan positioning. In fact, what I see is much more troubling than that. It is a loss of trust and an uneasy feeling that you are no longer a respected part of the nation or its future.

Of course, we all have very different realities and experiences in a country this large. Watching Prime Minister Mulroney so eloquently pay tribute to a great friend and leader last week caused many of us to recall his powerful rhetorical flourish. When Senator Tkachuk recalled a quotation, the words really resonated with me:

“We are all children of our environments,” Mulroney said. “We bring to given problems the judgment that has been shaped by the realities to which we have been exposed in our lives.”

Let me share a little bit about my reality and the lens through which I and the people I’m here to represent see Bill C-69 and a series of other pieces of legislation that have come before us.

While we all sincerely appreciate the need to be environmentally conscientious, I do not have the luxury of jumping on my bicycle and riding home along the canal every night, nor can I take public transit or call an Uber.

Here is how it works for me: I get on a plane to fly first to Toronto, then change planes and fly another three and a half hours to Regina or Saskatoon. At the airport, where my car has already been plugged in, I let it run for 20 minutes to save wear and tear on the engine, and then I drive another three and a half hours home.

It’s 20 or 30 below these days, so I plug in my car there, too, so it will start when I need to drive the 20 minutes to get groceries or mail or another three and a half hours if I need medical attention.

My reality is that I need fossil fuels. My community needs fossil fuels so we can heat our homes, so farmers can grow the food we need for ourselves and for export; so moms and dads can get to work and so local hockey teams can take their road trips to play other small town teams. Electric cars aren’t a good idea if you get caught in a snowstorm or end up in a ditch, but a tank full of gas might just save your life.

My community needs the work and the income generated by the young men and women who commute to Alberta or within my province to work in the oil industry. We need their spirit and their work ethic.

When the Prime Minister and others characterize those who work in the construction field or to help build pipelines as cause for social concern and for fear for the safety of women and families, you might want to stop and think about what you are saying, not just to the energy workers and their families but to the single mother on Facebook the other day who waitresses. She explained that the tips from “these guys that we should fear” feed her kids and pay for hockey equipment.

Words matter. Your words hurt and they belie a profound misunderstanding of the reality that these potential pillagers are actually husbands, fathers, sons, daughters — in my case, a nephew and many close friends. They are hard-working family people. Their kids play sports. They are community-minded. My nephew’s crew is actually hoping to work through Christmas, even if that means not being at home, because now that work is so sporadic paying the mortgage is more urgent.

Even the prospect of Bill C-69 is taking a heavy toll on our communities. So the character assassination cuts deeper than you know. It shows the lack of understanding of how many Canadians — Western Canadians — live, how we cope with vast distances, expensive rules and regulations, cold weather and few job options.

Let me remind you of some of the other messages that Ottawa is sending to my part of the world so you can see the context in which Bill C-69 is being received. There’s the carbon tax, which means a double whammy for small businesses and farmers who get hit twice both as consumers and producers. Giving them their own money back doesn’t help much when they are too small to qualify for a business subsidy or a rebate on the producer side when they’re buying farm inputs or getting products to market. And Saskatchewan has a carbon reduction plan. Ottawa just doesn’t like it.

Bill C-48, an oil tanker moratorium, is also seen as targeting and further restricting Alberta’s ability to move oil to foreign markets, and that costs jobs.

Then there’s Bill C-68, which we heard about a little earlier tonight, which most of us would like to support, except that it calls for farm and rural land to possibly become sustainable for fish habitats. People on the Prairies know about drought. Water is a precious resource to us. Livelihoods depend on it. I live on a lake. I get it. We fish. We eat the fish. But the farmer who has a slough in the middle of the field or an irrigation or a drainage ditch when there’s too much rain or not enough should not have to ensure it’s a fish habitat. It’s another case of regulatory overreach where farmers have to deal with burdensome, expensive and unnecessary rules designed for some other legitimate purpose.

I spoke recently on Bill C-71 and noted the same issue. The problem is crime, illegal guns and the resulting carnage on city streets. To appease part of the population, there will now be more red tape, more licensing and transport restrictions for law-abiding gun owners who use those guns as tools, not weapons. It’s not solving the problem that we all recognize is real.

Think back to the battle over income splitting and the obvious lack of appreciation by the powers that be of what it means for a small business or a farm, where spouses and family members all work, unpaid and unrecognized, to keep things afloat. And this small, legal gesture at tax time was deemed too much, although money for GM or Bombardier is okay.

There was the summer jobs fiasco where faith communities were denied funding and disadvantaged kids hoping to attend or work at summer camps couldn’t.

Over the past two years, we have seen what looks and feels like an assault on rural Canada. I’m not naive. I know as a country we are urbanizing and there are costs and consequences for being part of rural life. I have lived in big cities and I have travelled the world. I don’t expect all the amenities of big city life to be available in every small town. But I do expect decent health care and cell service, and most of all, I expect fairness and respect.

Governments must govern for all the regions. It’s their job to reconcile competing policy imperatives. We need climate action, but we need to be realistic about today’s energy needs.

Every year we have the same discussion about moving our grain and pulses to market. Yes, just like oil and gas, more than 65,000 grain producers who feed us and the world need to get their product to market. That legislation too was caught in the maw of yet another omnibus bill. The delays made it difficult for producers to pay mortgages and input payments.

Just last week at the Agriculture Committee, we learned that in the process of limiting unnecessary advertising to kids, we have now declared and classified bread as unhealthy, this at a time when we were told the cost of a family food basket is going up by more than $400 a year. Why? Because fruits and vegetables are becoming more expensive in part because greenhouses are getting out of the healthy food business in favour of the much more lucrative marijuana crop.

That legalization has exacerbated another issue: rural policing. RCMP detachments are woefully understaffed and they have hundreds of square kilometres to patrol. We should not have to tolerate a situation where a call to 9-11 goes unanswered or where people are told to lock their doors and hide because no officer can get to them.

I’m sure I can see some of your eyes rolling as I recount the experiences of the people where I live. But policies and attitudes have unintended consequences, or perhaps intended, and Bill C-69 is yet another powerful message at a very difficult time.

Yes, most of us know it is not the root of all evil. It didn’t stop pipelines or cause the price differential, but its effects are already having an impact. Investment is fleeing because few believe energy projects will ever meet the tests.

It’s no surprise that Saskatchewan’s Minister of Energy and Resources, Bronwyn Eyre, said that Bill C-69 is “…an existential threat to our competitiveness. ”And it is Canada’s economy, not just Alberta’s or Saskatchewan’s, that will suffer.

Bill C-69 makes a series of sweeping changes to the impact assessment process. It promises to shorten the timeline for assessment periods for review but adds more options for ministerial discretion, and that creates more uncertainty.

An updated list of which projects are or are not at the minister’s discretion is still being debated, so we don’t know, as we consider this legislation, which projects are on or off the list.

Some of the language in this bill is ill-defined. It declares that:

The Government of Canada, the Minister… must exercise their powers in a manner that fosters sustainability…

But there’s no definition of “sustainability.” It’s not provided. And what does the “intersection of gender and sex with other identity factors” really mean?

We are being told not to be too concerned with the provisions of this bill because once it’s passed, the regulations will reassure and explain. But as we know, too often what cannot get through the legislative front door comes in through the regulatory back door.

Determining the fine balance between our economy and our environment is not easy, so I can only hope that this bill will be thoroughly vetted in several committees, although at this point, I must say, my preference would be to have the drafters go back to the drawing board and try again.

I readily concede that the existing legislation is a problem, but two wrongs don’t make a right. So let’s get this right. As it now stands, I can’t support Bill C-69. It simply matters too much to the people and the place I call home. Thank you.