Alain Giguère Marc-Aurèle-Fortin, QC

Mr. Speaker, I want to set the record straight right off the bat.

The mining industry provides good jobs, as does the oil industry. We are not talking about $15 or $12 an hour, but $30, $35 or even $40 an hour. There are people who like having good jobs.

Obviously setting up a mine or a refinery has its advantages. However, believe it or not, Canadians are a strange bunch: they know that there are two sides to every story. Although one side might be quite attractive, they still want to get a full picture of the other side. That is the problem here.

Right now, there are 350,000 jobs in Canada connected to natural resource development. These jobs come with a whole lot of benefits that we do not want to give up. However, since we are responsible, we would like to ensure that the proposed new operations do not pose problems. That is the issue here.

Rather than solving the problem, the government made it worse by trying to force things down people's throats. It is unbelievable. Today, every time anyone wants to build a mine or refinery, legal action is immediately taken. In the past, during a time that was less Conservative and more favourable to informed development, projects were discussed and changes were made, a process that took several years.

However, the Conservative government wants to get things done in a year, a year and a half or two years at most. Here are the results: the Ring of Fire in northern Ontario has been rejected; the pipelines in northern British Columbia have been rejected; the pipelines that cross Quebec have been rejected; and the uranium mines have been rejected—and I hope they always will be.

This does not take two or three years. Before, it took four or five. Now it takes 10 years because of the legal proceedings. The whole notion of the Ring of Fire in northern Ontario is at a standstill because of this great government. This shows that when you do not do things right, you do not necessarily get the results that you want.

Whenever something as big and invasive as a mine, a refinery or a major industrial facility is proposed, people should be consulted and should be able to participate throughout the decision-making process. My colleague who spoke earlier said that the government had done everything in its power to make these projects safe. I would like to hear her say that to the people of Lac-Mégantic.

In northern Ontario, there have been three derailments in less than two months. Is that what they call safety? They say they will make companies liable. Sure they will. An oil tanker, theExxon Valdez, sank in Alaska. That was when Ronald Reagan was president. People paid a terrible price for that oil spill, so they asked for compensation. They are still waiting. The companies that made terrible messes in the Gulf of Guinea, the Gulf of Mexico and the Gulf of Alaska are the same companies operating here in Canada.

Now the government is telling us that these companies that have behaved badly elsewhere will have to respect the environment and Canada's peoples. I am skeptical, because we sometimes have little problems, like the one in Lac-Mégantic.

It is extraordinary that the first person who appears after a disaster is not a someone from the company itself who arrives with a cheque in hand and says that the company will pay for everything. No, no. Instead, the company's lawyer appears and says that before the company will pay for anything, we must prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the company is indeed guilty. They ask for help, they ask people to be understanding and, above all, they want to get out of paying anything and they want to shirk their responsibilities. This practice must stop.

Some projects must have a social licence. When a project does not havea social licence, it can get lost in the legal weeds and absolutely nothing happens. Sometimes, even great projects that create jobs might prompt people to say that progress is being made, but without a social licence, they do not work. One example I can think of is a uranium mine.

People are afraid, and they will continue to be afraid even if we give them the best arguments in the world. At some point we may just have to accept the fact that the people do not want a project.

The Conservatives have introduced their pipeline bill, and that has people worried. I can guarantee to the House that no one in Quebec is interested in seeing four inches of oil floating all over the St. Lawrence River.

Nonetheless, we can build refineries and secure the energy supply because certain aspects make this attractive. People are prepared to listen to what the Conservatives have to say, especially when they say that this type of project will bring in billions of dollars for the province and create an awful lot of jobs. People will listen closely, but they will also look at the other side of the coin and will have a say.

As for the people who have to live with a major industrial, mining or oil development project in their region, they are entitled to not only have a say, but also to be listened to and take part in the decision-making. If we dismiss them out of hand, then the whole process will go nowhere, and that is what is happening right now.

Many projects are not approved, from shale gas development in many municipalities to oil development in certain national parks. It is too bad, because some of these projects deserved to be better defended.

It is not true that people are short-sighted. It is not true that the NDP, and everyone for that matter, is automatically opposed to every mining project and that the first nations are starting a civil war. No, no. They are interested in having discussions and listening, especially if they get an attractive offer.

However, if the offer is not an attractive one and profits only one side, while the people assume all the risks, only the Conservatives are surprised that the people are not going to like this type of deal where they will always be the losers and the friends of those in power will be the winners.

It is vital that at some point the government finally decide to be Canadian for a day. Is it so horrible to ask that the government be Canadian from time to time? Unfortunately, the government does not often listen to us. However, we should not take it to heart.

The election is fast approaching and the good Canadian people may decide one day to give the boot to those who systematically defend interests that are not those of Canadians.

Murray Rankin Victoria, BC

Mr. Speaker, that is a difficult act to follow, but I will do my best.

Motion No. 533 is very specific in what it requests. It talks about how the federal government, in exercising its jurisdiction, should be submitting natural resource development projects to a broader consultation with first nations and citizens in communities and urban areas. That is the breadth of what is being proposed here. It makes a very broad yet very succinct request of this House.

In addressing the motion, I would like to talk about the nature of public participation, the nature of environmental assessment processes and the aboriginal issues relating to that, and finally about projects in British Columbia that are before us today, namely the Enbridge northern gateway and the Kinder Morgan projects, a lens through which I hope to examine the failure of a credible public participation process—not only, as the motion said, for first nations, but also for citizens in our various communities.

There is a vision for a new energy future that the Leader of the Opposition has articulated in the Policy Options magazine in September and October last year. It is quite interesting, because in that article he starts by talking about the crossroads we are at when it comes to aboriginal involvement in development. He talks of the Supreme Court of Canada's watershed case in the Tsilhqot’in matter that has driven home the fact that resource development will simply not happen without proper first nations consultation and accommodation.

I stress the word “proper” because it is not a “nice to have”, as the government treats public participation; it is a constitutionally required activity, a consultation that is not just about counting boxes and putting little ticks beside them to confirm we have had a chat. It is about a genuine good faith engagement with first nations when resource development affects either their rights or aboriginal title. When I say “title”, of course that is the burden of the Tsilhqot’in case that has been such a watershed development in our part of the world and across Canada.

Let us remember that in the Haida decision, the Supreme Court of Canada said:

Prior to establishment of title, the Crown is required to consult in good faith with any Aboriginal groups asserting title to the land about proposed uses of the land and, if appropriate, accommodate the interests of such claimant groups.

In comparison, the court was clear in Tsilhqot’in that after aboriginal title has been established, the default focus is consent:

After Aboriginal title to land has been established by court declarations or agreement, the Crown must seek the consent of the title-holding Aboriginal group....

What has the Government of Canada done in response to that? What has it done in response to the excellent report by its hand-picked appointee, Mr. Douglas Eyford, who worried that projects are failing because industry has been left alone to navigate the consultation and accommodation process? The government has done nothing. It has left us with a vacuum. It has left us with projects that may or may not be in the public interest but will never proceed, because first nations have not had the constitutional rights accorded to them by the current government.

The government first tried to download it to industry, which pushed right back and said that it was the honour of the crown that was at issue and that industry was not the crown. That has been a bit of a dead end, and it is tying up development that may be in the public interest across this land. It is simply shameful.

The ultimate form of consultation in our province is called the treaty process. This past week we heard that the Government of British Columbia is essentially walking away from the BC Treaty Commission. It cannot seem to find a person to appoint to that process.

Has the Government of Canada been yelling from the rooftops that it is committed to this process, that it has spent billions of dollars trying to engage first nations in unceded land and that through the process of good faith negotiations, it is trying to address those land claims? The answer is no. I have not heard the government say one thing about the crisis facing the BC Treaty Commission. I have heard Chief Sophie Pierre say it and I have heard Jerry Lampert, the federal appointee on the commission, say it, but I have not heard the Prime Minister or a single parliamentarian address that crisis.

It is a crisis not only because billions have been spent, but because that is the way in which we truly engage with first nations to achieve resource development that is meaningful and in the interests of not just the first nations communities but the people of Canada. It is a crying shame the Conservatives seem to have let that wither on the vine.

Douglas Eyford, whom the government appointed after the debacle of the Enbridge process, recommended a special fund for consultation with first nations. That dies this year. The government will not bring a budget forward and we do not know whether it will be continued and, if so, to what degree. That is another example of the lack of concern the Conservatives have for engaging in what the courts have termed “nation-to-nation consultation” with our first nations communities.

It is no wonder this motion was brought forward to demand that this occur. It is not only in the interest of first nations, it is in the interest of all Canadians that the process of reconciliation, which the Supreme Court has demanded of us, be finally addressed, and it is not.

I could spend time on first nations and more so, but I want to talk about the environmental assessment process.

Everyone knows that Bill C-38 gutted the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. We heard that loud and clear in the travesty of the Enbridge northern gateway consultation process. Over 130 first nations across British Columbia announced their opposition. Nearly 10,000 Canadians told the joint review panel that they opposed this project. Towns and cities across Canada oppose it. The community of Kitimat, in a referendum, told the people of Canada that they did not want any of this. Was it approved? Yes. The Government of Canada did not seem to care. So much for consultation. The level of cynicism that the Conservatives have engendered in the people of my province is absolutely tangible.

When we talk to younger Canadians about their engagement in the process, they say “Why bother?” The Conservatives create these little processes and ignore them. It does not matter how many people speak out because it does not seem to make any difference.

If we get into a protest, for example on Burnaby Mountain, and Grand Chief Stewart Philip is arrested, he tells us that under the new and improved national security legislation, his advocacy, protest and dissent will not be in that context lawful because it is subject to an injunction and that he will somehow be on a terrorist list. So much for participation in that project.

What the Conservatives do not seem to get is that they cannot proceed with resource development that may well be in everyone's interest unless they get a social licence. People in our province are having none of these projects because they realize the process by which they are being reviewed completely ignores the consultation that is required.

That is why I was so proud to stand in this place and support a bill introduced by my colleague, the MP for Skeena—Bulkley Valley, Bill C-628. It would, among other things, absolutely improve the level of consultation that this motion would require us to do. One of the things that bill would do would require a report to be submitted to a joint review panel or National Energy Board, as the case may be, that would include a summary of those positions taken by municipalities, first nations and individuals and specify how the board took each position into account in deciding whether to recommend the issuance of a certificate for a pipeline. Accountability is about that. It is ensuring what people say actually matters. That is why they would be unable to ignore the 10,000 people opposed to the Enbridge northern gateway pipeline proposal. Yet the government has the audacity to simply say no problem going ahead.

Closer to home, in my community, we have another proposal coming forward, and that is the famous Kinder Morgan project, in which Trans Mountain's application to double its pipeline and radically increase the number of tankers on our coast is being considered. How can the proponent ever achieve the social licence required when so many people have said that the process of consultation is broken?

The former head of BC Hydro, in a scathing letter, withdrew, saying it was a joke. Standing is being restricted to those “directly affected, reducing the number and diversity of interveners and limiting the participation to a single letter”. That is of course is subject to a charter lawsuit claiming it violates freedom of expression.

Consequently, that is another example of why the motion is so desperately required that government can begin to take consultations seriously so it would improve the life of not only first nations, but all Canadians.