Shannon Stubbs
Lakeland, Alberta · Conservative · Canada
“Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister claims that affordability is the best it has been in decades, but he should say that to the faces of the 1.5 million jobless Canadians, the 60% of people who are anxious about their finances and the 15,000 people who now use GoFundMe to pay for basics.”
“Mr. Speaker, the fact is that more Canadians than ever before need food banks and have to choose between eating, heating and driving. In a year, the PM spent $1 million on inflight cushy caviar catering for him and his cronies. That is enough to feed a family of four for 55 years.”
“Conservatives highlight potential conflicts of interest around seconded private sector and bank employees with salary top-ups; national security reviews, including Beijing's state-owned enterprise involvement in major projects; the role of the sovereign debt fund; and the federal government's refusal to confirm whether the Prime Minister…”
“Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to present the official opposition's dissenting report for the Special Joint Committee on the Exercise of Powers Under the Building Canada Act, Bill C-5 . The committee heard that a minimum of 275 projects were submitted to the Major Projects Office in the last year.”
“Conservatives still call on the Liberals urgently to repeal or reform the 12 laws and seven regulations in Bill C-5 that Liberals admit block building.”
“Mr. Speaker, the Prime Minister has made Canada the only G7 country in a recession. Even though the other countries face the same global challenges and tariffs, Canada's economy shrunk 75% of his term, with the lowest investment per worker in the G7. That is less opportunity and more stress for Canadians who cannot afford it.”
The complete record
Every one of 244 lines we hold for Shannon Stubbs, in date order, each linked to its source. Free to read, in full, without an account. Page 3 of 5.
“Mr. Speaker, it sure is an indictment of his own government and of his sitting here, at least in the last decade since I was elected, that he just admitted the federal government has not been working with provincial governments co-operatively over the last 10 years. Instead, today a consequence of the Liberal government is more division in provinces and people pitted against each other than ever before. What a shame that is. Of course the truth is that under the former Conservative government, four pipelines were built, and all the private sector proposals for both the LNG projects and the pipelines that the Liberals outright killed.”
“While Canada caps production, of course the world is passing Canada by, because the Liberals have let them. The EU has signed a $750-billion deal for American energy, and other countries have been forced to sign deals with hostile authoritarian regimes for LNG after the Liberals spent 10 years saying there is no business case. The Conservative motion today is very clear. We are the only party fighting to repeal the job-killing, economy-killing, emissions reduction-killing cap, full stop. Canadians cannot afford another lost Liberal decade. The motion is clear: Repeal the cap. Unleash Canadian energy to make a strong, united Canada self-reliant—”
“The truth remains today that the oil and gas sector, among all private sector developers, invests the most annually in clean tech and emissions reduction technology, more than all other sectors in Canada combined. Warnings that the cap will do exactly what the Prime Minister said he wanted it to do, which is to keep oil and gas in the ground and kill businesses, jobs and government revenue, and that it will also not even achieve the environmental outcomes its proponents claim, should be heeded. The Liberal oil and gas emissions cap is a production cap. The former environment minister also admitted that oil and gas production falls under provincial jurisdiction, so the cap also inflames already divided provincial governments and sparks legal challenges with more uncertainty that drives away investment.”
“Since growing Canadian oil and gas production and exports is the solution to ensuring Canadian energy security and to help lower emissions globally, the Liberals were warned “this could lead to greater global emissions as we see more coal being utilized than natural gas and sources of supply...coming from jurisdictions that don't have [Canada's] high standards.” World-class oil and gas operators across Canada point out their ongoing aggressive reductions in both absolute and emissions intensity, which, by the way, the Liberals' oil and gas censorship bill precludes them from talking about. The cap could also have the opposite impact from what its proponents claim, by driving more projects and investment out of Canada, and could “bring all action to a halt”.”
“The Conference Board of Canada warns that between 2030 and 2040, the cap could reduce Canada's GDP by up to $1 trillion, and strip $151 billion in federal revenues, money that could go to defence, to border security, to fighting crime and to federal programs, and could be shared with provinces to build hospitals, schools, roads and provide social services. Proponents across Canada agree the cap is bad policy and that it disadvantages Canadian businesses and jobs.”
“These are also not easily replaceable minimum wage jobs, since the average compensation for an oil and gas worker is nearly twice the national average for goods-producing sectors. Alberta employs 54% of the supply chain workers, but B.C., Ontario and Quebec together account for over a third of those jobs. That means that the cap threatens jobs, paycheques and government revenue from Vancouver to Montreal, and everywhere that oil and gas is produced, from Fort St. John to St. John's and Saint John.”
“That number of jobs will be lost in six years because of the cap, a cut of $21 billion from Canada's GDP. The cap will shrink Alberta's GDP by 4.5%, and the rest of Canada's economy by 1%. It will cause $191 billion of lost activity in Alberta and $91 billion in the rest of Canada. Why should this matter to Canadians in every part of the country? This is why: The oil and gas sector contributes 7.7% of Canada's GDP. It is still Canada's top export despite the damage the Liberals have done. Over $208 billion every year is what it contributes to Canada's GDP, with $166 billion from direct activity and $42.8 billion from the supply chain. It supports over 446,000 direct and indirect jobs, including more than 10,800 indigenous jobs. Nearly 900,000 Canadians depend on the oil and gas sector through spinoff or induced job creation.”
“(1635) The Liberals were warned the cap would harm indigenous, rural and remote communities the worst, but they did not care, even though Canadian oil and gas developers spend about $14 billion through procurement from 585 indigenous-affiliated vendors across 110 municipalities and 45 indigenous communities. That is real money that makes a real difference for indigenous people, all threatened by the revenue-killing, job-killing Canadian oil and gas cap. Since then, the independent Parliamentary Budget Officer has reported that the Liberals' oil and gas cap will kill 54,000 jobs by 2032. That is almost double the population of the Alberta-Saskatchewan border city of Lloydminster. There are hundreds more cities of that size across Canada.”
“The truth is that the Liberals announced the Canadian oil and gas cap publicly with little consultation and economic analysis in advance. The Prime Minister was even in another country when he imposed it. The Liberal-NDP-Bloc coalition at the time did a short study on it at committee, but Conservatives had to dissent in order to properly highlight the cautions about the wide-ranging and catastrophic impacts of the Canadian oil and gas cap. Witnesses during the committee work did warn them. Dale Swampy of the National Coalition of Chiefs said the government “treat[s] the oil and gas sector like they're the enemy and a problem to be fixed” and that “a cap on emissions will be, in effect, a cap on production”, which kills economic reconciliation opportunities for indigenous communities and business owners who need it most.”
“At the same time, both Democrat and Republican administrations turbocharged the American production and exports of oil and LNG, turning the U.S. into the world's leading global supplier, while the Liberals, while watching all this happen, increased their stranglehold on Canadian oil and gas and workers at every single step. Various experts estimate the discounts cost Canadians big, about $25 billion every year. Just imagine what infrastructure, programs or services that revenue could provide right now and could have contributed during the last decade to benefit Canadians everywhere, if the Liberals had not spent the last decade killing active private sector pipeline proposals to ensure that no new ones would be proposed.”
“The layer of the Canadian oil and gas cap on top of other anti-energy laws and policies block the very projects that would create Canadian jobs, reduce emissions and get Canadian oil and gas out to allies and to global markets. The last, lost Liberal decade of domestic policy attacks on Canadian energy has put Canada in a vulnerable, dependent position that was totally preventable. Canada of course still sells up to 90% of our oil and gas to the United States at steep discounts because the Liberals killed two potential export pipelines outright: one to the west coast to access growing Asian markets in the most direct, affordable and safest route, and one west-to-east pipeline that would have ensured Canadian self-sufficiency with western oil for eastern refineries and more competition for customers with exports to Europe.”
“Even though the current Prime Minister is another Liberal, he suddenly claims to want to make Canada an energy superpower and put shovels in the ground on major projects at unimaginable speeds not seen in generations. However, how can Canada be an energy superpower when the Liberal government blocks Canadian energy production and exports with its own laws and policies that are all still on the books? How can Canada lead when the Liberals decided to impose a policy that interferes in provincial jurisdiction and that experts, proponents and indigenous entrepreneurs all say will kill major projects and thousands of jobs?”
“No other country, and importantly, no major oil- or gas-producing country, has imposed an absolute cap federally on its own production: not the United States, Canada's biggest energy customer and competitor, which, because of the last anti-development Liberal decade that killed at least four Canadian pipelines and dozens of LNG projects, turned the world away from Canada and drove hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in major projects out of our country; not Norway; not Saudi Arabia; and not a single OPEC nation made up of hostile, anti-freedom regimes with lower and often non-existent environmental and human rights standards.”
“The current Prime Minister , of course, said, “as much as half of [proven oil reserves] need to stay in the ground.” The Liberals, 20 months and three weeks ago, said the Canadian oil and gas cap was bold climate leadership. However, common-sense Conservatives saw it for what it was: an unprecedented, arbitrary production cap, the only one of its kind in the entire world, and self-harm to Canada by our own federal government. That is right, and let me be extra clear about it.”
“Mr. Speaker, I will split my time with the new, great member for Terra Nova—The Peninsulas . In 2023, the Liberals imposed yet another step in their anti-Canadian energy agenda, an oil and gas emissions cap they touted as the first and only kind in the world, designed to limit Canadian oil and gas production, which will really cap and kill Canadian jobs, businesses, private sector clean tech, and revenue for all levels of government to provide programs and services Canadians value. Its true intent, to limit production of Canadian oil and gas specifically, is clearer in the words of the current Prime Minister , who was a senior economic and energy adviser to the then prime minister, Trudeau, when he announced it.”
“They must scrap the “no new pipelines, never build anything anywhere” Bill C-69 ; the shipping ban, Bill C-48 ; Canadian energy censorship; the Liberal oil and gas cap; and the federal industrial carbon tax so Canada can compete. Conservatives want to unleash natural resources to make a strong, united Canada self-reliant, affordable—”
“Mr. Speaker, Canadians still pay the price for the lost, anti-development Liberal decade. Six months ago, to get elected, the Prime Minister promised to put shovels in the ground on big projects at unimaginable speeds, but what Canadians got was the same old Liberal bait and switch, photo ops and more bureaucracy, because the PM is just another Liberal. The Liberals say five projects have made their secret list so far, some already approved and some already being built, but there is not a single pipeline to create Canadian jobs with Canadian steel and pay for programs that all Canadians want. Conservatives worked to improve and pass Bill C-5 , but it is not enough to get back the $60 billion that left Canada due to Liberal red tape. Bill C-5 admits that the Liberals' own laws blocked building.”
“Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for our work together in trying to improve Bill C-5 as best we could. I am glad we won the fight to ensure there would be some limits on the cabinet in Bill C-5 to prevent it from exempting laws such as the Access to Information Act, the Lobbying Act, the Canada Elections Act, the Criminal Code, the Investment Canada Act, the Foreign Influence Transparency and Accountability Act, the Extractive Sector Transparency Measures Act, the Railway Safety Act, the Trade Unions Act, the Explosives Act, the Hazardous Products Act, the Indian Act, the Governor General's Act and the Official Languages Act. That is an issue on which we worked co-operatively to help the Liberals improve the bill.”
“Mr. Speaker, this is part of the concern we have with the government bringing forward a bill where it is trying to fix the mess that it made itself. Maybe I will just take this opportunity to acknowledge my colleague for all of his passionate, dedicated, steadfast advocacy for health, mental health and wellness for men and all Canadians and congratulate him on the successful passage of the 988 line, which is a lifeline for vulnerable and at-risk Canadians. Congratulations to him. We are so proud to have him on our team.”
“This is the major issue that the Liberals must get right; otherwise, they risk and threaten getting to yes in a good way, which every single Canadian and indigenous person in this country deserves.”
“Mr. Speaker, I think it betrays the lie the Liberals have been peddling for 10 years, which is that the most important relationship to them is with indigenous people. They have a track record of killing major research projects and pipelines that indigenous people worked years and years to negotiate in a good way with big companies to secure their own source revenue for self-sufficiency and self-reliance. There are big questions about how on earth the Liberals could try to bring in this law that exempted 16 different acts and six different policies, including the Indian Act. I appreciate my colleague's comments and thank him for his collaboration.”
“That is why the government should heed the words of the various chiefs who participated and of the AFN national chief, who cautioned that because of the lack of clarity around the duty to consult in Bill C-5 , which Conservatives tried to fix, all approvals out of this may face court challenges, which will delay building. The Liberals need to fix that.”
“Mr. Speaker, Conservatives will not stand in the way of the Liberals' sudden and often diametrically opposed to the tenures of their own words and actions efforts to get Canada working and building, as Conservatives have called on them to do the entire time. We are hopeful, but we do remain skeptical that Bill C-5 can fully solve the problem of the current broken federal regulatory mess that the Liberals made. We believe in reconciliaction and know that indigenous people want to pursue equity, ownership and more powers of development and self-determination with their own rights and title.”
“(1040) Conservatives champion responsible resource development, independent oversight and a united Canada, and our amendments to Bill C-5 uphold those values. Conservatives believe in strong paycheques and unity through opportunity, not division and double standards through federal overreach. We believe in reconciliaction through—”
“Democratic accountability anchors this principle, so the subamendment strengthens review with independent, balanced representation across parties. Canadians expect transparency, not spectacle. They expect real checks, not blanket approval. Canada holds vast potential. Natural resources, energy and infrastructure sustain millions of jobs, fund public services, build communities and bolster global trade. Any bill for national development must reflect this reality and champion, not hinder, the sectors that drive prosperity. Canadians need an approach that does not curb ambition, repel investment or deny opportunity. Canada cannot tolerate a framework that casts resource development as a threat rather than a strength. Canada demands confidence, not caution, and momentum, not paralysis.”
“They have to find a will, a spine, a set that they have failed to show in the past decade in order to enforce their own jurisdiction, to treat the national interest approvals according to the general advantage of Canada and to uphold legal and jurisdictional certainty so that proponents can build their projects when approvals face challenges and obstruction. Otherwise, this will all be big talk and a lot of delays without fixing the real problems, which are the antidevelopment laws and policies the Liberals themselves decided they needed this queue-jumping Bill C-5 to work around. Conservatives' work continues today, with subamendments to clarify and fix flaws. We proposed a parliamentary committee with a nongovernment Chair. No government should judge its own actions.”
“All Canadians can be forgiven for wondering why the Liberals would have presented such a potentially significant law free from all of those laws in the first place. Conservatives pushed crucial amendments to ensure provincial consultation and to protect provincial jurisdiction and provincial decision-making power, because what the Liberals must show is that they can ensure big projects in federal jurisdiction can be built for Canada's economic strength, security and national unity, not meddle in others.”
“This should not be necessary, of course, but we have a Prime Minister who hides his conflicts and where he pays his taxes, and who ran to make the company Brookfield invested in all the kinds of projects that Bill C-5 would fast-track, although under the Prime Minister, it mostly invested in the U.S. and abroad. This caused a flurry and a huddle among Liberal MPs, a couple of odd questions, and then the Liberals voted against it. Thanks to Conservative pressure and support from another opposition party, we forced the government to follow its own laws designed to prevent corruption and to put the public interest ahead of partisanship. Conservatives also got limits put on cabinet to prevent it from exempting 15 foundational laws that no government should ever sidestep.”
“I proposed a one-year deadline to issue permits once a project is designated; a 90-day limit for the Governor in Council, the cabinet, to make final decisions; and a requirement to prioritize private or public-private funding to protect taxpayers, to prioritize private funding. Canada should be a place where the private sector can take big risks and build big things on its time and on its dime, not where taxpayers have to be on the hook to get anything done. The Liberals rejected those amendments. Then I brought forward an amendment to apply the Conflict of Interest Act to enforce clearer safeguards to prevent corruption and block Liberals from stacking the deck in favour of their friends.”
“(1035) These amendments matter. They bring transparency, accountability, more certainty, more clarity and integrity to a bill that originally had none. However, even with these improvements, major concerns remain. Bill C-5 would still allow ministers the power to remove a project from the national interest list at any time, without notice, reason or recourse. I proposed to remove the power to take projects off the list once they make the cut, because that uncertainty may continue to push investors and builders to other countries with clearer rules and more predictability, just as the Liberals have done to Canada for the past decade. Since delay is death to major projects, Conservatives also aimed to give concrete timelines that do not actually exist in Bill C-5 , despite all the Liberals' claims about a two-year process.”
“Conservatives also successfully incorporated the requirement of a public list of national interest projects, with timelines, estimated costs and rationale; application of the Conflict of Interest Act to officials and proponents to prevent abuse and prevent politically connected insiders from pursuing personal profit over the public interest behind closed doors; mandatory national security reviews for hostile regimes and state-owned investments into major national interest projects to combat foreign interference and economic imperialism from adversaries and to protect Canadian sovereignty and security; a requirement for the government to fully deliver on its mandatory duty to consult and a clear map for indigenous consultation, with public reporting to build trust, earn confidence and respect indigenous rights and title so that major projects can get to yes in a good way, with minimization of predictable court challenges and delays; and annual independent reviews of project progress so all Canadians can measure the Liberals by their actions, not just their words, and hold them accountable.”
“Still, Bill C-5 does not fix it for everyone; it will fast-track a chosen few. At first, it did not even define “national interest”, which left every decision to the whims of cabinet and a lack of clarity for everyone involved, but Conservatives fought to require the government to define national interest with clear, specific criteria. We succeeded in adding that necessary clarity and structure to a process that started with none.”
“At committee, the Canada-U.S. trade minister admitted, quote, whoever puts forward these projects, be they public, private, indigenous, provincial or municipal, does not have to go through an evaluation and approvals process that could take five to six years. He admits the Liberal system takes years and delays building. It is not clear whether projects that are actually in provincial or municipal jurisdiction may end up in the Bill C-5 queue for a federal review, which would be a similar overreach problem to that in Bill C-69. The mix of public and private infrastructure should cause taxpayers to take notice too, but again the obvious first step should be to fix that whole evaluations and approvals process the minister himself says is too long. Proponents and the government itself are trapped by the red tape they imposed.”
“It will ultimately be up to Canadians to determine whether they do, and Conservatives will hold them accountable in the meantime. Even now, Bill C-5 sets up a politically driven and determined process. Ministers will decide who goes ahead and who waits. They can even one day decide a project that they said was in the national interest earlier is no longer and remove it from the list or whatever ad hoc review a responsible minister determines. This is a problem I tried to fix: inherent uncertainty, huge powers behind closed doors and not a permanent fix or way to regulate and review projects in the sector most important to Canada's economy, imperative to help turn poverty into prosperity and to help lower emissions globally. Bill C-5 blurs the lines, just as Bill C-69 did. What is worse is that the Liberals know it.”
“The place the Liberals should start is with all the projects stuck in the federal queue right now, such as the Ksi Lisims LNG project, LNG Canada phase two and Bruce Power upgrades, and they should be looking at the dedicated west coast export pipeline to serve Asian energy demand that they killed 10 years ago and indigenous-backed roads to unlock the Ring of Fire. They are in the national interest, and they are waiting for a green light. They should be on the national interest list and fast-tracked yesterday. Nevertheless, Conservatives worked in good faith with other opposition parties and with the Liberals to help improve Bill C-5 , and here I want to thank the Conservative team for all its efforts. It will be up to the Liberals to deliver on their rhetoric and to keep up all their big, but vague, promises to Canadians.”
“As the transport minister said herself in committee, “we have come to a place in Canada where we have such a thicket of processes, rules and regulations...that we are unable to build with the alacrity that this moment in time requires.” It is not during just this current moment that major projects cannot get built in Canada with brisk and cheerful readiness. That has been the worsening reality of the last decade of Liberal antidevelopment laws, policies and messages. That dense, cumbersome thicket was created by the very same government that claims to be new while half the ministers are the old ones. Conservatives offer real solutions: to cut red tape, gatekeepers and taxes; to create clear rules; to attract private investment; and to fast-track major projects for the benefit of all Canadians.”
“Instead, Canada ranks last in the G7 for development, and the Liberals now scramble to patch what they themselves destroyed. Bill C-5 would not fix the fundamentals. It admits failure, with hundreds of thousands of Canadian job losses and more to come, unaffordable power and fuel, and skyrocketing costs of essentials. What the Liberals have to do is what the Conservatives said all along. They should scrap Bill C-69 , Bill C-48 , the federal industrial carbon tax, the Canadian oil and gas cap and all their other antidevelopment policies and laws. Proponents today still face unclear rules, no concrete timelines, interference and limited transparency.”
“Mr. Speaker, Bill C-5 proves one thing for certain: The Liberals broke the system, and Canadians pay the price. An unprecedented $5 trillion of Canadian capital went south and into other countries, and they killed $670 billion in major natural resource projects that could have been built by Canadians with Canadian aluminum and steel for Canada's economic strength, self-reliance, security and unity. In five years alone, 16 major projects were sidelined because of them. It cost Canadians over $176 billion in lost nuclear, critical mineral mines, LNG terminals, pipelines, indigenous-led projects and energy corridors delayed or derailed by lawsuits, bureaucracy, delay and Liberal policies. Imagine how powerful and self-reliant Canada would be today.”
“will still take up to 90% of Canada's energy at big discounts if the Liberals keep their job-killing Canadian oil and gas cap; the anti-development bill, Bill C-69 ; the shipping ban bill, Bill C-48 ; and the federal industrial carbon tax on Canadian businesses. In Canada, anyone from anywhere should be able to work for a powerful paycheque. Conservatives will—”
“Mr. Speaker, after the last lost Liberal anti-development decade, Canadians pay the price. Today the G7 starts. Canada used to be powerful, but the Liberals are lucky we still have a seat at the table. Canada's economic growth is now last in the G7. Allies like Germany and Japan begged for Canadian energy, but the Liberals rejected them, and $670 billion in natural resource projects died by delay and Liberal attacks. This PM claims “elbows up”, but they have been “elbows down”. Canada has the world's highest per capita resource wealth, but the Liberals made Canada more reliant on the U.S. Canada's standard of living falls behind, with an income gap of over $30,000 per person versus the U.S. The U.S.”
“Should you agree, in order to allow for the error to be fully and properly cleared and to ensure appropriate respect for the overarching importance of government accountability to Parliament, to all of us who represent the people, I intend to propose referring the matter to the procedure and House affairs committee for further consideration.”
“You will recall that in the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the House frequently sat in committees of the whole. A similar question of privilege arose, on which Speaker Rota addressed this procedural angle in his July 22, 2020, ruling, at page 2701 of the Debates, “I accept that the particular circumstances of this situation, notably the challenge surrounding the committee of the whole format, do make it appropriate to bring the matter to the Speaker.” In conclusion, I would submit that the necessary thresholds have been met here, allowing for you to make a prima facie finding.”
“The issue is whether the statements were made deliberately, with the intent of misleading the House or its Members. In the case where a Member later admits to having knowingly provided false information – as in the Profumo case – the issue of intent is clear. In the absence of such an admission, however, it rests with the Committee to examine all of the circumstances and determine whether the evidence demonstrates an intention to mislead. Finally, there is just one further procedural point I should add. Generally speaking, questions of privilege that arise in a committee setting are supposed to come before the House only by way of a report from the committee first, but the nature of committees of the whole, which are single-event bodies, complicates the ability to raise concerns that arise out of their deliberations.”
“He was intensely questioned on the floor of the House of Commons for four hours, on the Liberals' terrible record over the last 10 years in the resource sector and trying to defend and spin his Prime Minister 's signature bill, which had already been attracting a significant degree of scrutiny from all corners. In any event, intention is not something that, I would respectfully submit, requires ironclad proof like a confession. Indeed, the procedure and House affairs committee, at paragraph 15 of its 50th report, presented in March 2002, acknowledges that intention may well be a matter for committee investigation: As [then clerk of the House] Mr. Corbett explained to the Committee, it is not uncommon for inaccurate statements to be made in the course of debate or Question Period in the House.”
“First, the content of Bill C-5 , which I cited earlier, plainly contradicts the minister 's answers. Second, the Minister of Energy and Natural Resources has been held up by the Liberal government ever since the spring's election as the man who is supposed to get major resource projects launched. There can be no way that he is not intimately familiar with the details of Bill C-5, the policy for which it stands and the government's intentions for how to put it into effect. (1350) Third, we must recall the context of the minister 's answers.”
“Speaker Milliken shared a similar view in a ruling on February 1, 2002, on page 8581 of the Debates, when he said, “The authorities are consistent about the need for clarity in our proceedings and about the need to ensure the integrity of the information provided by the government to the House.” There is a well-established test for determining whether deliberately misleading information has been provided, which, for example, the Speaker explained in his February 15, 2024, ruling, at page 21146 of the Debates: “It must be proven that the statement was misleading; it must be established that, when making a statement, the member knew it to be incorrect; and finally, it must be demonstrated that the member intended to mislead the House.” In the circumstances, I would respectfully submit that all three branches of this test can be made out.”
“That is the fundamental mechanism of the bill. House of Commons Procedure and Practice , third edition, on page 82, provides a list of established grounds for contempt, including “deliberately attempting to mislead the House or a committee (by way of statement, evidence, or petition)”. This point is reiterated at page 112. The importance of accurate information being provided to Parliament has been underscored in a number of rulings, including that made by one of your predecessors on March 3, 2014, at page 3430 of the Debates: This incident highlights the primordial importance of accuracy and truthfulness in our deliberations. All members bear a responsibility, individually and collectively, to select the words they use very carefully and to be ever mindful of the serious consequences that can result when this responsibility is forgotten.”
“It states: If the Governor in Council is of the opinion that a project is in the national interest, the Governor in Council may, on the recommendation of the Minister, by order, amend Schedule 1 to add the name of the project and a brief description of it, including the location where it is to be carried out. The minister also holds the authority to remove projects from schedule 1. That power is set out in the deletion clause: If the Governor in Council is of the opinion that a project named in Schedule 1 is no longer in the national interest, the Governor in Council may, on the recommendation of the Minister, by order, amend that Schedule to delete the name and the description of the project. These provisions, directly from Bill C-5 , make it absolutely clear that the minister and the Governor in Council do pick the projects.”
“Bill C-5 would explicitly give the minister the authority to approve or deny projects. This authority appears in several key provisions of the bill. Part 2(c): requires the minister who is designated under that Act to issue to the proponent of a project, if certain conditions are met, a document that sets out conditions that apply in respect of the project and that is deemed to be the authorizations, required under certain Acts of Parliament and regulations, that are specified in the document. Further, clause 5(1) of the bill grants the Governor in Council and cabinet the authority to designate projects as being in the national interest, but only on the recommendation of the minister.”
“First, the minister's statements during the committee of the whole on Wednesday evening flatly contradict Bill C-5 itself. I asked the minister , “how do political, hand-picked projects give investors certainty?” The minister replied, “the politicians do not pick the projects.” I asked again, soon after, for clarity, “the minister said earlier, and kept trying to claim, that he does not approve projects, but his own bill says he does. Is that not true?” The minister answered, “I think what we said is that we do not pick the projects.” These responses were clear and direct. They were answers to very specific questions about whether the minister himself would select projects deemed to be in the national interest through Bill C-5 , and the legislation shows that he would.”