Elizabeth May
Saanich—Gulf Islands, British Columbia · Green Party · Canada
“It is easy to roll out solar panels, except that our provincial utilities get in the way. In any case, the cheapest source of electricity, reducing the cost for everyone, would come from focusing on renewable electricity. I do think there is some promise, although it needs a lot of work.”
“We are the only party in the House that does not receive a penny of support from the parliamentary budget, being both unrecognized and unfavoured. I am glad my colleagues from the NDP received funding to make up for what they lost when they ceased to be a recognized party. I have less money, but I am here, and I am not alone.”
“When it became clear that children were dying of Reye syndrome in New Brunswick because of forest aerial spraying by the forest industry. He stated, “I don't like to see people dying. This is one of the things I really wouldn't like to see.”
“That is not the only thing I want to concentrate on, although I will take most of the time, and I am grateful for the chance to speak to this bill now, finally, in this place. Regarding the removal of the excise tax, I have asked before about this in question period.”
“There is not even a link in the language used within the spring economic statement, the budget itself or Bill C-30, but it clearly, by inference, rests on this assumption: More pesticides are going to reduce food prices and help the economy. That is a leap. Let us say that is wrong, based on the evidence, in two ways.”
“Mr. Speaker, the hon. parliamentary secretary is a friend, so when I say a friend, it is not just rhetoric, but I am disappointed. When Bill C-30 was first tabled, I asked the hon.”
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“Mr. Speaker, I mentioned in my speech that it is unprecedented to take away a Canadian's right to the privacy of mail delivery. The amendments to the Canada Post Corporation Act, which the member mentioned are in part 4, are warrantless, and the threshold is lower. It should be a source of concern to all Canadians that we are creating a law that says we can open mail if we have reason to suspect. On top of that, the sharing of information could mean that more open Canadian privacy information could go to U.S. authorities.”
“Mr. Speaker, perhaps it is because I have represented refugees in the past in my work in the private practice of law that I know the laws around the international status of refugee protection. Someone in Canada could have a reasonable expectation that they can stay in this country but then find out they have to leave. Until Bill C-2 passes, the door is open for them to make a claim if they have legitimate grounds to do so. We are shutting that door when they do not have a chance. It is a catch-22 being imposed on people who are potentially legitimate refugees. That means we are violating our international treaty obligations to protect refugee rights.”
“Mr. Speaker, if I was not clear, I do not want to get the bill to committee. Let it die here at the end of first reading and fail at second reading. The bill attracts a number of concerns, and there was never any campaign discussion that it was important to deny people the rights that they would ordinarily have to ask for refugee protection in this country. They would be denied those rights without a hearing, and that is unprecedented.”
“There is no point in passing a law that would be very soon struck down by the courts as violating our charter rights. I know I have very little time left, but I hope I will have time in questions and comments to expand on some of these points. Bill C-2 should be rejected. It would be much easier to start over and have a bill that starts from the premise that it is about borders, not about trying to appease the White House.”
“This is a very different way of approaching the protection of Canadians. What it is really about when we look at it in the current political context is what we can do to convince Donald Trump that we are going to sacrifice the civil liberties of Canadians to meet the talking points of a deranged U.S. President. It is just not acceptable. I urge all members of Parliament in this place, all parties, to take the time it takes. This bill will get to second reading. I think it is unlikely we can stop it, although that would be great. The Liberals do not have a majority in this place. Maybe we can stop it from going to second reading. In the meantime, it is likely to go to second reading, and it needs thorough study at committee, particularly from experts, on the charter compliance questions.”
“I have looked at the government's tabling, through the Minister of Justice , of the charter statement to see whether this bill is charter-compliant, and it really comes down to a series of statements of analysis saying that, while this bill could attract challenges under section 8 of the charter and involves intrusions of privacy, it is all going to be okay because “trust us”. At this point, we are looking at intrusions of our civil liberties, which other members of Parliament have mentioned, with a very low threshold for opening our mail. It is true, as I know a parliamentary secretary said, that a small envelope with a small amount of fentanyl can kill many people, but this bill does not try to categorize in any way or create any kind of threshold for reasonable suspicion that mail is conveying drugs.”
“Mr. Speaker, as I was saying, Bill C-2 is an omnibus bill that would change multiple pieces of legislation, and it really would not address the issue of strong borders. When we are addressing as many different bills as this bill does, to repeat what I mentioned earlier, we attract the attention of 300 different non-governmental organizations across Canada in a coalition. Groups with very different interests are looking at our positions on the civil society protection of charter rights.”
“Mr. Speaker, it seems that “elbows up” has been replaced with “chequebooks out”. The Canadian Nuclear Laboratories partnership is primarily U.S. corporations, the private sector, and is involved with the nuclear weapons industry. It has now done a deal with our old friend at SNC-Lavalin, now called AtkinsRéalis, which operates Canadian Nuclear Laboratories. Canada is giving them the biggest federal contract we have ever issued, at $24 billion. The deal is being reviewed by the Competition Bureau. When will it go to national security for a review, or do we just write cheques to Trump now?”
“The government would be taking private information for benign purposes, so we should not worry about it opening mail, with a very low threshold for when it is allowed to open mail, or accessing information about an Internet supplier or the information it may have about a citizen. We should not worry about that; the charter statement says the government will not be taking this information in ways that could hurt citizens in the course of protecting their charter rights. I do not buy it. I do not think many MPs—”
“(1355) The Minister of Justice has released the analysis from the Department of Justice recognizing that Bill C-2 would raise many concerns about whether it is charter-compliant, and I have read it. I will address this more fully when we resume this debate after we have question period and members' statements. I do not want to risk impeding and encroaching on that time, and I know that I will get cut off anyway. The reality is that this charter statement from the Department of Justice does not assuage my concerns. It says that the government would be able to access this information but would not be using it in ways that could result in a prosecution.”
“They need to have substantial evidence that they have a legitimate fear of being sent back to their country of origin. The bill, if passed as is, would expedite the deportation of people without them having a chance to make their case, which they have the right to do under Canadian law, as to why they have legitimate fears of being killed if they are sent back to their country of origin. There is a great deal that needs to be said about this. The more we can deal with it without partisanship, the better. It is an odd experience to hear the Conservatives decry that the Liberals are soft on crime. When I look at the legislation, I wonder what happened to our respect for the charter.”
“from Canada, as the President of the United States would like at least his own citizens to believe. That is a complete fiction, at the level of being a fraud. Canada Border Services agents need their resources amplified so that they can ensure that illegal guns and dangerous drugs are not coming across the Canada-U.S. border, flowing from the U.S. into Canada. Refugees, people who legitimately need to have a place to claim refugee status, must not be barred before they get any chance to even put forward their claim. I am someone who used to work in this area of law; claiming refugee status is a very steep hill to climb. We do not have a system within this country that tends to support refugees just because they say they are refugees; they have to prove it.”
“Since then, over 300 civil society organizations dealing with civil liberties and refugee protection, as well as basic privacy protection groups such as OpenMedia and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, have raised questions and deep concerns, calling on the government to withdraw the legislation. It is not that I think our government is anything like Donald Trump's government, but the legislation is Trumpian. Therefore, we need to stop, think, reflect and withdraw the legislation so that we can focus on its title, its alleged purpose, which is the strong borders act. I think a lot of Canadians want strong borders dealing with the United States. We know that illegal guns come across the U.S. border into Canada. We know that illegal drugs come into Canada from the U.S. Fentanyl is not flooding into the U.S.”
“The bill, in short form, deals with the following separate pieces of legislation: the Customs Act, the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act, the Canada Post Corporation Act, the Oceans Act, the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act, the Proceeds of Crime (Money Laundering) and Terrorist Financing Act and a number of information-sharing pieces of legislation that appear to be aimed toward preparing Canadian law to allow U.S. security and U.S. law enforcement agencies greater access to Canadians' private information. As I read it at the time, on June 3, I was alarmed and I began to dig into it.”
“Given that I have roughly six minutes at this time and will be able to return to this after a number of other routine events in this place, none of which are routine anymore, I want to say that this is offensive on a number of levels for viewers and fellow parliamentarians. It has been a long time. We get tired of keeping track of Liberal election promises. Maybe the promise from 2015 never meant anything anyway; it has been abused so much. However, I find it offensive to face omnibus bills. Legitimate omnibus bills, by definition, should focus on the same legislative purpose, not multiple legislative purposes.”
“Mr. Speaker, I rise here as we resume Parliament to talk to a bill tabled June 3; it is the first time I have had an opportunity to address it in this place. I will not forget this, as I used to practise law myself and practised law on behalf of refugees. I was reading a bill that I understood to be called “the strong borders act” and wondered what all these sections were about changes to the Immigration Act. Why are we making it harder for people to claim refugee status? Will this, in fact, violate our international obligations under the treaties to protect the rights of refugees? I will back up.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is my first opportunity to address the new member for North Island—Powell River. The Conservatives, who backed the Liberal measures through May and June, seem to have decided that now is the time to draw the line. I am glad it is on Bill C-2 , because Bill C-2 should be completely withdrawn and rethought. I would like to ask the hon. member if he thinks the Conservative Party would ever again back a programming motion such as the one used on Bill C-5 , which denied us a chance to properly study the bill.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to take the floor on an issue of concern. In every one of the community meetings I held since we last met in this place in June, I heard from constituents desperately concerned about the lack of primary health care providers and family doctors, and I know that while this is of particular concern in Saanich—Gulf Islands, it is a concern everywhere. The petitioners call for the federal government, the House of Commons, to work with all provinces and territories to come up with a full and fair solution to Canada's family doctor shortage, premised on the importance of the Canada Health Act, that is universal and single-payer.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is a pleasure to welcome back an old friend, and now I just have to learn how to say Ponoka—Didsbury. It also seems to me that the hon. member has brushed with greatness, within his own caucus perhaps, with the change of the riding name, though I do not think the map changed, as he is right next to Battle River—Crowfoot. I would like to return to the question of whether this extends new benefits that are not automatically understood by law. As much as the hon. member praised the Conservative Party changes in 2009, does he not think it is a problem that the Court found those changes were not charter compliant?”
“Mr. Speaker, welcome to the hon. member for Brandon—Souris. There is one thing I probably should have mentioned in my speech, and it hit me as the member was speaking. In this conversation, we are leaving out what will happen if we do not pass Bill C-3 expeditiously. If it is not passed by November 20, the bar on first generation citizenship that was brought in in 2009, which has been found to be unconstitutional, will just be automatic; they will all get citizenship if we do not do this as the court has required. We have had extensions from the court, but it is not going to give this Parliament another extension, so we will not even have, as parliamentarians, the ability to create the kind of guidance that is in Bill C-3 .”
“Mr. Speaker, I thank my colleague and friend, the member for Rivière-du-Nord. He is right. We definitely have bigger issues to contend with when it comes to immigration. That being said, we still have to deal with Bill C-3 . He is also right to say that if former prime minister Justin Trudeau had not decided to prorogue the House, this bill would already be law in Canada. It has been almost a year. All the same, we need to do the work, but I agree with my friend.”
“Mr. Speaker, the hon. member will have a perfect opportunity to hear from experts who have looked at citizenship law. That hypothetical was a little too much like “three people get on the empty bus, five get off, and then three more get on, so my question is, how old is the bus driver?” To answer the hon. member's question, I would like to have sensible, thoughtful discussions in committee. If the bill needs amendment, then we should make sure the government allows us to do so.”
“Mr. Speaker, I congratulate my hon. colleague on her position in this place, representing the government as deputy House leader. It is wonderful to see a member who represents such an important part of Canada, young women, in Parliament. I think it would be very, very wise for all members to reflect on our words. As members of Parliament, I urge them, all of them, regardless of party, to not listen to the boys in the backroom. They really need a lot of psychiatric help. Their main goal is power for its own sake, no matter what. This is a time for us as members of Parliament to do the right thing, and to look not for a gotcha moment but for a “do the right thing” moment.”
“Citizenship should be a right. Under Bill C-3 , we would be redressing the mistakes of many years and responding to the requirement of the court that we fix our citizenship laws to be charter-compliant. With that, I know I still have about 90 seconds on the clock. I just want to make sure I plead with all of my colleagues, regardless of party, to take a step back and look at who the champions of this bill have been: a leading Conservative senator; a leading NDP member in this House; and all of us together, Green, Liberal, Conservative, Bloc and New Democrat, which is still a party in this House, by the way. Members can check the seating chart. We are here to do the right thing and do it together.”
“Most of these people are already paying taxes in Canada and getting their health care in Canada. They have just been denied citizenship through the most egregious set of quite obscure and bizarre mistakes in law. We can fix those. We can fix them now. We can fix them for good. The remaining question, I suppose, is this: Do we want to add an amendment that says citizenship is a right? Normally, I would not think we would have to say this, but when I look south of the border and hear that Donald Trump would like to take away Rosie O'Donnell's citizenship, I think maybe we ought to be concerned and make sure that we in Canada assert what is internationally understood law, that citizenship rights are rights. People who are citizens cannot have their right to be a citizen taken away because someone in power has an obscure whim. Never mind.”
“All amendments were due the next day, June 18, by noon, and concerns from groups like the Canadian Cancer Society could not be heard before amendments were due. We were in a hurry. This place should be about getting things done efficiently, but not being in such a hurry that we do not do our jobs, so let us have a proper committee review of this legislation, which I think would put to bed some concerns, for instance, the idea of costs. There are Canadians who, just through peculiarities of mistakes made in the legislative process, have been denied their citizenship. We can get through this and get the actual numbers through a committee hearing process, but most of these lost Canadians live in Canada. They are not coming here as new people, just off a boat, where we wonder who they are. Most of these people have deep ties to Canada.”
“We have a new bill before us, Bill C-3 . It is almost the same as former Bill C-71 , which died on the Order Paper because of the decision to prorogue Parliament on January 6. [ English ] We speak of things dying on the Order Paper; it is nice to see that every now and then we can have a resurrection. We have gotten Bill C-3 back, and it is close. I would love to have proper hearings and make sure that concerns that are being raised are dealt with by experts, with the ability for Canadians to see that we do not pass things with a gun to our head. That was Bill C-5 . No committee was in in place when Bill C-5 went to second reading on Monday, June 16. No committee was yet started. On Tuesday, June 17, the committee was put in place at 3:30 in the afternoon.”
“I would say it was not just an unpleasant experience; it was an anti-democratic experience that was deeply troubling, and it was a bulldozer driver. It was a new coalition, the Liberals and the Conservatives, driving through a very anti-democratic piece, and the process was particularly anti-democratic. I hope we will not see that again. I go back to Bill C-3 . (1610) If we are going to see this bill pass, and I hope we will see it passed expeditiously, I want to deal with some of the substantive charges that have been made in the House today in debate and put them to rest, I hope forever, so that we can return to our purpose in this place, to restore justice, to act for our constituents and to make sure we do the right thing. [ Translation ] This is not a partisan issue. It is about doing the right thing right now.”
“Now, it would have been nice to see the current government pick up on a suggestion I made in a written communication to the Prime Minister to please recover those bills, especially the ones that had broad, non-partisan support and had gotten this close to the finish line. Regarding the amount of waste, I imagine that millions of hours of work went into those 25 bills, many of them so close, such as Bill C-61 on first nations water sovereignty or Bill C-33 on rail safety and ports. Let us celebrate this: The deceased Bill C-71 is back as Bill C-3 . Let us hope we can have collaboration now. The Liberals here in the House today celebrate the collaboration they had in June; I have to say, that was not collaboration. That was the Greens, the Bloc and the NDP being bulldozed, with a new person driving the bulldozer in our new Prime Minister .”
“When Bill C-71 was tabled for first reading in June 2024, we gathered in the foyer with the former minister of immigration and members of families deeply affected by the unfairness of the way our citizenship laws are currently drafted. We were almost euphoric, and we were grateful to the former minister of immigration, who took this forward, who made the difference to having Bill C-71 brought forward. We were not, as an hon. member mentioned earlier, just propping up Liberals or cheering whenever Liberals did something. Again, this was the ultimate non-partisan effort led by a Conservative senator, supported by an NDP member and supported by all of us on all sides of the House. We thought we had it solved. Unfortunately, 25 bills then died on the Order Paper on January 6.”
“There is another person, not in my party, whom I want to thank and make it really clear to our friends across the way in the Conservative Party. Another champion for the bill, mentioned by my hon. colleague for Vancouver East , is a Conservative, Senator Yonah Martin. She tried really hard to fix the bill. She has Korean ancestry. She has been a champion for the Canadian Korean community in many ways, including for those who suffered through the war. She is a friend of mine too, so I will admit that. Senator Yonah Martin brought this forward as a private member's bill out of the Senate to try to fix this, and as the hon. member for Vancouver East mentioned, there was a non-partisan effort among NDP members, Conservative members, Liberal members, the Bloc and the Greens to get this thing done. We were so close.”
“He wrote a book on lost Canadians to get people to see what has happened with citizenship, which used to be seen as a right passed down from parent to child. This is not new. I learned this in conflict of laws in law school, as I am sure, Mr. Speaker, you may recall. These kinds of things are not innovative. It is just very strange and disturbing for Canadians when our citizenship laws get contaminated with innovations, and citizenship is not treated as a right. That is one piece that is missing in Bill C-3 . Should we have an amendment in Bill C-3 that says citizenship is a right? However, there have been a lot of partisan jabs across the floor, even in the brief time that we have been debating this since question period. I want to take some of them up, because this is important for Canadians to know.”
“Mr. Speaker, I want to begin my remarks by thanking the hon. member who preceded me. It is one thing for a member to say they have championed the bill, Bill C-3 , and repairing the rights for lost Canadians, but as a leader of a different party, I want to say that the hon. member for Vancouver East is absolutely right. She has championed this and championed this and not stepped back for one minute. It has not been easy. We have had various versions of the bill come to us. We had a court decision that made it very clear that our citizenship laws are not charter-compliant. As I have, she has worked with a citizen, Don Chapman, who has championed this, who has brought forward the concerns.”
“Petitioners ask that the current Parliament declare that the opioid crisis is a public health emergency; that we reframe this crisis as a health issue rather than a criminal issue; that we take a comprehensive wraparound approach to this crisis, addressing issues of addiction, poverty, housing, health care, racism and the economic disparities and instabilities and precarious situations that drive people into a situation where their lives are at risk; and that we do something about it. Petitioners ask that the House work on the recommendations made by frontline workers, health care community experts and those directly involved in the drug-using community to decriminalize drugs in Canada.”
“Mr. Speaker, thank you, and to my hon. colleague from Courtenay—Alberni who just preceded me. I am rising, and having travelled through my communities in Saanich—Gulf Islands, I have the great honour to represent the wonderful community of Pender Island and to present this petition while thinking of my friend and constituent Leslie McBain, one of the founders of Moms Stop the Harm. Petitioners from my community are asking that we recognize the overdose crisis as a public health emergency. The number of individuals who have died in opioid-related deaths is now up to over 15,000. We are dealing with a poisoning crisis because of fentanyl contamination in the drug supply.”
“Madam Speaker, I would like to thank my colleague from Madawaska—Restigouche, with its large Acadian community, which also speaks French, as do Quebeckers. I support reforming the Citizenship Act in order to protect the rights of people who have lost their citizenship. However, I would like to propose some amendments. I have a question for my Liberal colleague. Can it be that the Prime Minister has lost the key to his bulldozer? In June, we did not have time to study any bills. We only had time to get them passed very quickly. However, Bill C‑3 is in need of some major changes.”
“Mr. Speaker, it is a strange thing to find myself more shocked now than I was by things that the Harper government tried. We saw bills pushed through before, but I have never seen an omnibus bill with such breadth and such impact on multiple laws that dictates future decision-making. Again, the use of a time machine would be handy. It violates the basic precepts of study, exploration, hearing from witnesses and making amendments based on hearing advice from those who are experts in the field. As for the effect on the environment, it could be quite substantial because it is a matter of luck at this point. What projects get approved? Who knows? It is Charlie and the Chocolate Factory all over again.”
“Mr. Speaker, I thank my friend, the member of Parliament for Nunavut, for her extraordinary courage, her championing of indigenous rights and her consistently calling out the importance of intergenerational love. There has been a lot of trauma visited on indigenous peoples, and I do not know anyone who has been clearer than the hon. member for Nunavut. The offences done to indigenous rights in the bill are significant, and the offences to children, whether settler culture children or indigenous children, in undermining our democracy, will cause, I am afraid to say, serious damage. I have never seen a government expand powers to the centre and then, when the so-called emergency is over, relinquish them to go back to normal levels of respect for Westminster parliamentary democracy. The role of a prime minister is first among equals.”
“Mr. Speaker, the bill cries out for amendments and improvements to ensure that the projects chosen to be in the national interest meet some kind of binding set of criteria. It needs to create a system. Why have a law in place, as opposed to a wonderful declaration that everyone signs? If it is a law, it should have accountability mechanisms. It should be reviewable by a federal court if the promises and commitments made by the government are not observed. The bill has nothing mandatory. Even the much-vaunted major projects office is a discretionary move. It is claimed the bill would do all sorts of things: We will not proceed unless there is consensus and we will not proceed unless there is a private sector proponent. The Minister of Natural Resources said this in the main estimates, but nothing in the bill says that.”
“Words in press releases and promises are good, as long as governments respect the things they have said in elections, but to say they mean something and care about something is rather a hollow claim when they produce a bill like Bill C-5 . (1700) [ Translation ] This makes me so very sad. I think it is a real tragedy that the first bill introduced by this new government is so dangerous, as we have seen in recent days and weeks. [ English ] All I can say at this point is that it breaks my heart. I want to be with the new government. I want to be with my colleagues and stand for one Canadian economy, but we need to think it through. We cannot make it so with the bravado of a great signing ceremony and a bill whose laudable ends are undermined by appalling drafting and a claim for powers that no government should hope to achieve.”
“The kinds of powers the government would be taking onto itself are unknown in modern times, and they should have remained so. I will be voting against both part 1 and part 2, with reluctance. I would love to be on board. I want the government to succeed because Canada has to succeed. We must have a successful country that stands up against the arrogance and threats of the Trump administration, but we do that through economic sovereignty. We do not do it by imitating Trumpian moves, like deciding the central power needs more power. We do not do it with the bravado of signing statements that are meaningless. Laws in this country should be drafted with precision. Words have meaning when they are in legislation.”
“As Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak said in her testimony to the House and the Senate as national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, and as Jody Wilson-Raybould has said, our former minister of justice and someone who really understands the rights and title of first nations in section 35, this bill would do violence to the efforts we have made, inadequate as they are, toward reconciliation. This bill has clauses that are completely unbelievable, such as clause 6, which would deem that decisions made in the future are already going to be in favour of the project proceeding, even before we have either listed the project or studied it. That is a fascinating provision, a provision that only Henry VIII could have come up with.”
“It is going to be building a time machine, because we cannot get free, prior and informed consent unless indigenous peoples, first nations, Métis and Inuit are in at the very beginning of the conversation, before it gets put on the national interest project list. For that, my friends, we need a time machine to go back in time to do the consultations that will not have happened, because with the way the legislation is drafted, it cannot happen in advance. I am all for a time machine, but I do not think it is very practical. I do not think it is likely to happen. I think like many leaders in indigenous communities do.”
“It was made a call for justice that there be public transit so that vulnerable people like indigenous women and girls would not be forced to hitchhike, because there is no way to get from A to B in a wealthy, modernized, industrialized country like Canada unless someone has the money to own a car or buy a plane ticket. There are many projects in the national interest that we need. The Prime Minister said that free, prior and informed consent and the rights of indigenous people are “at the heart” of Bill C-5 . I do not want to rewrite his speeches for him, but I suspect what he really wanted to say was that it is in his heart. It is what his government cares about, but it is nowhere to be found in Bill C-5. I suspect our first big national interest project is going to be something of a moon shot.”
“Of course, schedule 1 is blank, and we can find out what is going to be put there because cabinet is going to decide, and there are no fixed criteria or anything reviewable later on as to why a project was in the national interest. It could be that the main factor taken into consideration is polling. That would not be against this law, and there would be no way to challenge it in court later. It could be that everything put forward by cabinet is absolutely brilliant, and I will be cheering for it, like an east-west-north-south electricity grid or a public transit system that works for people in the way the inquiry on missing and murdered indigenous women and girls wanted.”
“The bill is all about leaping before we look, and definitely that is the case in the “build Canada fast” section, the identification of projects in the national interest. (1655) [ Translation ] That is the key question. What is a project of national interest? How do we determine which projects are truly in the best interests of all nations in Canada? How do we find the common destiny of all provinces, territories and indigenous peoples? How do we determine which projects are truly in the national interest? [ English ] The bill leaves it a mystery. What is a project in the national interest? There is a definition section in the bill that tells us that a project in the national interest can be found in schedule 1.”
“Most legislation like this would include a carve-out, an exemption, for health and environmental protections, but we were too busy. The Prime Minister and his government were in too big a rush. I question why that would be. It certainly could have been fixed easily. I cannot vote for it as it now stands. I do not want to see another Walkerton in Canada, and I do not want to see what happened in England when Maggie Thatcher got rid of unnecessary regulations: the spread of mad cow disease. We really do not know the cost of getting rid of valuable regulations until we are dealing with a crisis. Many regulations can be removed. Much red tape is in our way, but we need to look before we leap.”
“We certainly also need labour mobility; we need to recognize it across provinces, and that means working with many regulatory bodies. For instance, for doctors, we need to deal with the appropriate medical societies within each province to make sure the health care professionals we so desperately need can be recognized more quickly. It is an awful shame, then, that I find I have to vote against part 1, and that is because of concerns raised to me directly by the Canadian Cancer Society with the way the bill is drafted with respect to the way a recognized standard at a provincial level could be recognized and could replace a stronger standard at the federal level. Had the bill not had the programming motion that pushed it through before anyone could think twice, I think that could have been fixed quite easily.”
“The European Union, for instance, has a viable electricity grid that works across all its jurisdictions. It was able, after Putin's invasion of Ukraine, within months, to plug Ukraine into the EU electricity grid. We do not have one in Canada that we can plug into. The province of Nova Scotia has very, very high utility rates, and it stills burn coal for electricity, which other provinces have ceased to do. It could buy everything it needs from Hydro-Québec if only we had the interties to have a Canadian electricity grid. It has been something that hurts our economy and certainly hurts our businesses and many sectors. We do not act like a country, but worse than that, we often do not think like a country, so I was very excited to hear the new Prime Minister 's commitment to bring down interprovincial trade barriers.”
“I want to take a moment, if it is all right, to say that I do appreciate the Speaker's ruling earlier today that we will vote on part 1 and part 2 separately. I want to make it clear that the Greens definitely support bringing down interprovincial trade barriers. We desperately want to see a national approach that makes Canada at least as co-operative and effective between and among different jurisdictions as is the European Union, which deals with separate nation-states, many of which were certainly in the oral history of my childhood from parents who lived through the Depression and the Second World War. We certainly knew countries that now co-operate fully in the European Union were, a short time ago, relatively speaking, at war with each other. Here we are in Canada, and we have less co-operation.”