QUESTION PERIOD — Crown-Indigenous Relations
Framework to Build a Green Prairie Economy
February 28, 2024
My question is for Senator Gold. In December 2022, Parliament passed Bill C-235, sponsored by the late Jim Carr, which required the government to develop a framework for building a green Prairie economy in consultation with the Prairie provinces. The bill mandates, as Jim Carr, a great Prairie optimist phrased it, “collaboration and co-operation and relationship building.”
The government recently tabled the framework, and it is disappointingly short on details. There is scant mention of consultations with the governments of Alberta, Saskatchewan or Manitoba in creating the framework.
Senator Gold, can you provide clarification to this chamber on what, if any, official consultations the federal government undertook with provincial counterparts to develop this framework?
Thank you for your question. The initiative of the late Jim Carr was an important one, signalling, I think, the commitment within Western Provinces to do their part — as they have done and will continue to do — to help our country transition to a new, cleaner and more sustainable environment.
With regard to these specific conversations, consultations and collaborations between the government, I’m going to have to inquire further and inform myself further with the relevant minister before I’m in a position to answer the question.
Thank you for that undertaking, and I look forward to learning more. The bill requires a report on the implementation of The Framework to Build a Green Prairie Economy to be tabled in the next two years. Based on the bare‑bones framework we have right now, I’m concerned that the government isn’t meeting the high expectations for renewed cooperative federalism that the bill originally envisioned. Will the government commit to greater detail and transparency when reporting to Parliament on its engagement with the Prairie provinces?
Thank you. I think we all look forward to the report to which you referred. I hope that both the federal government and its provincial counterparts are engaging actively and in a collaborative manner so as to provide a robust framework within which the work that’s already being done by many companies and supported by governments in many provinces can not only continue but flourish.
