Honourable senators, I will be very brief, but I do rise to move an amendment to 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. I will briefly explain the background of this amendment, which is crucial for the province of Newfoundland and Labrador. It is also an issue for the province of Nova Scotia. You might wonder why a man from Manitoba is doing this, but we stand together with our colleagues.

Section 43 of the impact assessment act, as it was passed in the other place, provides that:

The Minister must refer the impact assessment of a designated project to a review panel if the project includes physical activities that are regulated under any of the following Acts:

(a) the Nuclear Safety and Control Act;

(b) the Canadian Energy Regulator Act.

The bill was amended to add the Canada-Nova Scotia Offshore Petroleum Resources Accord Implementation Act and the Canada–Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation Act.

In the form of the bill presented by the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, the offshore boards were not mentioned in section. These references were added on in committee in the other place.

Therefore, I am proposing to delete the clause that would add the accord acts to this section. This is a direct request from the current Government of Newfoundland and Labrador.

I will quote their concerns with this section for the record:

By allowing a variety of levels and types of impact assessment processes, the scale of the assessment and the type of process used can be aligned with the particular circumstances, nature, scope and potential impact risks associated with the designated project. However, this flexibility is inapplicable to the assessment of offshore oil and gas activities regulated under the Canada–Newfoundland and Labrador Atlantic Accord Implementation Act . . . . For such activities, the Act requires a mandatory review panel . . . and the Minister has no discretion to permit substitutions . . . or joint panel reviews . . . . As a result, the Act provides no means to align the scale and type of assessment process to the particular designated offshore oil and gas project.

Therefore, they specifically asked the Senate to delete the references to the accord acts from section 43.

The Honourable Derek Mombourquette, Minister of Energy and Mines in the Government of Nova Scotia, told the Standing Senate Committee on Energy, the Environment and Natural Resources:

We would also echo the amendments suggested by others, including our neighbours in Newfoundland and Labrador.

Colleagues, I consider this a non-partisan amendment, since the two governments who requested it are the only Liberal provincial governments in Canada. Rather, this is a common sense amendment meant to prevent investment in the Atlantic offshore from fleeing to other countries.

If this amendment does not pass, every single offshore oil and gas project in Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia would be required to go through a review panel, which is the longest, most expensive form of environmental assessment possible.

The offshore oil and gas industry accounted for 23 per cent of the province’s GDP and employed 24,000 Newfoundlanders and Labradorians.

In Nova Scotia, the offshore industry is not as well developed, but the potential for growth is vast. The Government of Nova Scotia has identified this industry as a major economic driver of the future.

This section, unamended, would be a major roadblock for both provinces’ aspirations, and that is why both governments have asked us to amend it.

I am proud to move this amendment and ask that all my colleagues vote to adopt it and respect the wishes of Newfoundland and Labrador and Nova Scotia.

I will also read a quote from Premier Ball: “My government’s support of Bill C-69 is predicated on the notion that exploration wells and other well-understood activities with proven track records and mitigation measures will not be subject to impact assessments under the IAA. Given the joint management regime in place for the C-NL offshore area, the province requests that the reference to the C-NLOPB be removed from section 43.”