Moved third reading of 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, as amended.

He said: Honourable senators, I rise today to speak at third reading of Bill C-69 as amended by the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources. Our deliberations and the input we have received have at times been intense, emotional, loud and divisive, but none of this is really surprising. The stakes are very high.

My province of Alberta is at the centre of it all. For Albertans, the energy industry is visceral, emotional and deeply significant. It is how we feed our children, pay our mortgages, define ourselves, envision our future and calculate the tremendous contribution we have made to the prosperity and strength of this remarkable country. Many Albertans fear for their futures. We see this industry under siege. One senior energy executive told me that after many years of building, employing and contributing, he has been made to feel like he has somehow done something wrong.

At the same time, a majority of Canadians, including many Albertans, are increasingly uneasy about climate change and other environmental challenges. There is no doubt that this is a seminal driving factor in the debate provoked by Bill C-69. We recently learned that Canada is warming at twice the rate as the rest of the world. Canadians understand this and many are already experiencing the impacts of climate change in their own lives. Canadians’ concerns about the environment cannot be diminished in the search for public policy solutions to issues of resource development.

Indigenous peoples bring yet another set of aspirations, anxieties and legitimate grievances. There are particular concerns for Indigenous women that further heighten the intensity and stakes in this debate. They deserve our respect and our attention.

It is this mix of competing interests, vocal stakeholders, historical grievance, emotion, and high economic and environmental stakes that has defined the nature of the Bill C-69 debate. This debate has become a proxy for a broader and deeper issue that Canadians cannot avoid and must confront.

We are at a critical inflection point in our history. Canadians, and perhaps in particular Albertans, are facing unrelenting environmental, social and market pressures. We have to address how we will develop an economy of the future capable of sustaining our prosperity while confronting increased angst and fear about the environment.

All of this makes for the kind of difficult debate we have experienced over Bill C-69, but great parliaments confront these kinds of debates head on because these issues must be confronted. Great parliaments provide leadership in difficult and complex times. That’s what this debate is about. No, it has not been easy. At times like this, it never is, but without doubt, it is necessary and I am very proud of this place.

You might ask, of course, why even open the proverbial Pandora’s box that Bill C-69 seems to have become? The obvious answer is because our current process for project reviews defined in the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act of 2012, known as CEAA 2012, simply has not worked. The CEAA 2012 regime has not delivered a pipeline to tidewater. It has continued to burden the mining industry with duplicative review processes. It has failed to build the public trust amongst Canadians that is critical to successful project review, and it has been mired in continual litigation that has unsettled investors.

The key public policy objective of Bill C-69 is to fix CEAA 2012, and in order to do this — I borrow this concept from Senator Wetston — we have to align the competing interests that surround resource development. We must create an efficiently functioning review process with certainty for proponents, to be sure. At the same time, we must build public trust in our impact assessment processes. That requires answering environmental, Indigenous and broader public interest concerns. We live in a democracy, public trust matters. It defines what we can and cannot do.

So what was the process that went into developing this legislation that essentially formed its foundation? First, the federal government undertook a massive consultation on the modernization of impact assessments. It spanned more than two years, visited many communities, included studies by two expert panels and two House of Commons committees, received numerous submissions and received much public response to several discussion papers.

This consultation involved ongoing engagement of industry, Indigenous organizations, environmental groups, life cycle regulators, provinces and territories through the Multi-Interest Advisory Committee and it involved multitudes of individual Canadians.

It was out of this process that the basic architecture of Bill C-69 was created. Committee work in the House of Commons and the Senate has built upon that architecture with extensive hearings and meaningful amendments. First, the House of Commons Standing Committee on Environment and Sustainable Development held 14 meetings, heard from 87 witnesses and received 150 briefs. The committee approved 135 amendments responding to stakeholders’ concerns.

In turn, the Senate as we all know, carefully examined Bill C-69 over the past year. In addition to the many — and I mean many — emails, calls, letters, and meetings that I know each of you have received and participated in, the Energy, Environment and Natural Resources Committee heard from 275 witnesses over 108 hours of hearings in 10 cities across the country and received 121 briefs.

We have listened to Canadians from every part of the country, and I have every confidence that the final version of this bill will have been significantly enhanced by the work of the Senate.

In addressing the weaknesses of the current system, Bill C-69 set out to first build public trust; demonstrate respect for Indigenous rights, participation and concerns; create greater certainty and efficiency for business — key, of course, to investor confidence; and to create a much better early planning process which supports each of these three elements and other elements as well. Let me provide detail in each case.

First, in order to build public trust, the bill, among other things, expands the factors to be considered in impact assessments, including climate change and gender-based analysis. It would be hard to imagine an assessment in today’s context having any credibility with the public if it did not address climate change in some way.

We heard compelling testimony about how major projects can affect women, including Indigenous women in especially harsh economic ways like feeding and sheltering their children in boom towns with spiking food and housing prices. These things need to be mitigated.

The bill further requires that the assessment of each of the factors not be optional, but that each factor be considered by either the agency or the proponent as required by the agency.

Public engagement under this bill will be started earlier, during the new early planning process.

The bill modernizes the structure of what has been the National Energy Board by splitting two functions, the review and the subsequent life cycle regulatory processes. That will be captured in the role and mandate of the new board which replaces the NEB, the board is called the Canadian energy regulator.

The bill introduces the element of public interest in the decision criteria and lays out clearly what these criteria will be. It creates greater transparency.

Second, with respect to Indigenous rights, participation and concerns, Bill C-69 makes explicit reference to the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and specifies that impacts on Indigenous rights must be assessed.

Bill C-69 requires that impacts on Indigenous communities be assessed and that Indigenous knowledge be considered in all assessment reports.

Certain review and advisory bodies will have to include representatives of First Nations, Inuit and Metis communities.

The bill requires funding for Indigenous participation in impact assessments and for capacity building.

Indigenous jurisdictions are given a stature commensurate with provincial and territorial governments under new provisions for substitution and delegation of impact assessments from the federal level.

Third, Bill C-69 addresses the need for greater certainty and efficiency which are key to proponent and investor confidence. For example, it shortens every timeline currently in place under CEAA 2012. The assessment stage for most projects will drop from 720 days to 300 days. Most pipeline reviews will drop from 450 to 300 days.

Reasons for which timelines can be suspended will be reduced to three and specified. Each of these three are under the control of the proponent. Currently there are no such specified reasons for delays.

Public consultation, often seen as a reason for delay, will have to be completed with a specified timeline.

The bill requires that reasons for delays and assessments and final decisions on projects be explained publicly.

While evolving the NEB into a new modernized body, the CER, the Canadian energy regulator, the bill provides for the transfer of personnel from one to the other and with it the expertise that has been built.

The bill refers to economic benefits 171 times.

The new regional assessment and strategic assessment processes will inform and streamline project reviews.

The bill will reduce duplication amongst jurisdictions, departments and agencies through new early planning and substitution provisions.

Building public trust has a serious implication for certainty and efficiency in, among other things, diminishing the litigation risk that is so unsettling to proponents and investors.

I want to make a special note that the bill establishes a formal early planning process, which may not be widely understood, but which is very important, in fact, critical, to the functioning and the advantages offered by this bill. Its importance and advantages were captured extremely well in the testimony of Pierre Gratton, CEO of the Mining Association of Canada. I refer you to his testimony.

While this early planning process is seen by some to add 180 new days to impact assessments, project proponents, of course, already currently undertake extensive planning, but this planning is not counted into comparative timeline tallies. Unlike the current planning efforts, Bill C-69’s early planning process will formally require of federal departments and agencies certain critical commitments and responsibilities.

For example, all relevant federal agencies and bodies will have to identify possible issues and information requirements based upon early consultations with communities and Indigenous peoples that might be affected. In addition, there will be five structured outputs required of the impact assessment agency early in this early planning process critical to clarifying what is expected of the proponent.

First, the tailored Impact Statement Guidelines document will define explicitly how factors for review will apply to given projects and which ones will be the responsibility of the proponent and which ones the responsibility of the agent. This will clarify, for example, for each project factors to be determined or considered such as economic, health, social and, yes, gender-based analysis and climate change review requirements.

Second, an Indigenous engagement and partnership plan based upon consultation with Indigenous peoples will be prepared. That’s at least in part a direct response to industry concerns that they’re not clear about which communities they need to consult with.

Third, a public participation plan outlining parameters of public consultation will be delivered out of the pre-planning process.

Fourth, a cooperation plan detailing how agencies and jurisdictions will work together and avoid duplication will be a product of this early planning process.

Finally, there will be a permitting plan designed to streamline the post-approval permitting process.

These examples of provisions already in the bill underline how many of the weaknesses in CEAA 2012 have been addressed by Bill C-69. However, and this is very important, the input we have received over the past year, as intense and thorough as it has been, makes it clear that more can be done to enhance this bill.

The committee’s report includes a broad range of amendments designed to meet that objective. For example, there are many instances where ministerial powers can be delegated to officials reducing the political discretion that exists in CEAA 2012.

Certain amendments will clarify the scoping of factors for the particulars of each project, ensuring that those that should be done by the proponent will be but not necessarily requiring all of those to be done by the proponent.

Other amendments are directed at lowering the risk of litigation. Reassurance can be given through some of these amendments that economic competitiveness will be acknowledged more in this bill. Additional references to Indigenous rights and greater acknowledgment of the impacts of project development on Indigenous women are captured in amendments proposed by Senator McCallum.

Honourable senators, we have all worked extremely hard to understand these issues, to listen to stakeholders and translate what we heard into amendments. We have contributed to what I believe has been a remarkable public policy process, characterized by extensive public consultation and equally extensive review by the Senate.

I thank all of you, your staff and the Senate administrative staff once again for outstanding work on a very challenging policy issue.

I now simply suggest — I ask — that we send this bill, as amended, back to the House of Commons in an expeditious manner so that the government and the house can take a serious look at the amendments and propose a response.