Branden Leslie

Mr. Speaker, let me take members back in time a few years. When the Liberals introduced Bill C-69, they told us that the new process would make project reviews more efficient, predictable and timely. Now, eight years later, that sales pitch has not aged well at all. Now we have Bill C-39, and the government's own explanation says its approval system suffers from lengthy timelines that delay projects and create uncertainty for investors. That is quite an admission. What matters now is whether Bill C-39 would actually fix them. This, of course, is after the Liberals brought in Bill C-5, which was going to bring in sweeping legislative changes to allegedly build at speeds not seen in generations. We now have a Major Projects Office that has issued no new permits, built no new projects and created no new jobs other than government jobs, of course, over the past 18 months. In terms of Bill C-39, the first thing we should understand is the government's promise of a one-year federal review. That sounds simple, but it is not. The clock would not start when a company first brings forward a project. There could first be up to six months of planning. Then, the company would normally have up to a year to provide the studies and information government requires, and even that period could be extended. Only after government officials are satisfied that they have the information they need would the main review clock start. From there, the assessment report would generally be supposed to be completed within 300 days, followed by up to another 65 days for the final decision. Therefore, when Canadians hear “one-year approval”, they should not assume that means one year from the day a project enters the federal system to the day it actually gets an answer. A company considering a $10-billion mine wants to know something simpler: How long will it take from entering the process until it has enough certainty to put billions of dollars on the line? I will be splitting my time with the member for Fort McMurray—Cold Lake. What happens if the government misses its own deadline? The project would not be automatically approved and the government could simply keep reviewing it. The only penalty for the government's delaying all this is that the minister would have to explain why the deadline was missed, and publish another proposed timeline. If the purpose of a deadline is certainty, how much certainty would it really provide if missing it simply produces some bureaucratic gobbledygook and yet another deadline further down the road? The second major change would be what the government calls “one project, one decision”. Today a company could spend years completing an impact assessment and then discover it still needs another round of federal permits before construction can begin. Bill C-39 would allow the environment minister to issue certain permits at the same time as the final impact assessment decision. For a mine that needs Fisheries Act, Canadian Navigable Waters Act or Species at Risk Act approvals, that could remove some back-to-back processes, but it would not initially include every federal permit. That leaves me with questions. Which permits are actually delaying projects today? How many would be covered properly by the bill? Which important ones would still remain outside it? If a company gets its impact assessment decision but still waits months for another approval, would we have achieved one project, one decision? The bill also would allow certain construction to start before the final decision where doing so is in the “public interest”. Anyone who has built something in rural Canada understands why that can matter: If they miss a construction season, a project could lose many months. If construction could happen while the rest of the assessment continues, time could be saved, but companies need to know early what qualifies. The nuclear changes would be more substantial. For nuclear projects, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission would become the lead assessment body. Environmental review, public participation and indigenous consultation would remain. What would change is who would run that process. Instead of having the Impact Assessment Agency of Canada run one process while the nuclear regulator runs another, Bill C-39 would put the CNSC in the driver's seat, and the minister would no longer be able to send the project into another separate federal review. Instead, the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission would run the assessment, and once the project is approved, the conditions imposed during that review could simply become part of the nuclear licence the company must follow. In other words, rather than creating one set of conditions through the environmental review and another through the licensing, the bill would try to bring the two processes together. That could reduce duplication, but does the CNSC have enough people and expertise for this new and expanded role? Would projects get decisions faster, or would the bureaucracy simply look cleaner on an organizational charge? Changes for the Canadian Energy Regulator raise similar questions. Bill C-39 would make the CER the sole assessor for pipelines, designated power lines and offshore renewable energy projects. For pipelines, the bill creates two tracks based on how much entirely new corridor has to be built. If a pipeline requires less than 300 kilometres of new right-of-way, the CER would generally make the final decision itself. Today, the regulator can spend up to 450 days reviewing a major pipeline and making a recommendation, only for the file to then go to cabinet for a final decision. For projects below the new threshold, that extra cabinet step would generally disappear, but for pipelines requiring 300 kilometres or more of new corridor, cabinet would still need to make the final call. The CER would have up to 180 days to complete its review and recommendation, and then cabinet would have another 60 days to decide, followed by another 125 days for the CER to issue the final certificate and conditions. Those are significant changes, but where did these numbers come from? Why is it 300 kilometres? Why should a pipeline requiring 290 kilometres of new corridor be decided by the CER, while one requiring 310 kilometres still has to go through a cabinet approval process? Is that the threshold based on environmental risk or project complexity, or is it simply where the government just decided to draw the line? The same question applies to the timelines. Why is it 180 days? Why is it 60? Why is it another 125? Has the CER confirmed that applications can realistically be handled within those periods without stopping the clock more often? The 300-kilometre threshold is also not in reference to the total length of the pipeline. Let us imagine a 500-kilometre pipeline where 350 kilometres follows an existing corridor. If only 150 kilometres requires an entirely new right-of-way, the project would fall below the threshold, even though the pipeline itself is 500 kilometres long. The bill is measuring how much new ground the project must break, not simply how long the pipeline is. Then we get to the fine print. These clocks, they are not absolute. Parts of the process can still be excluded. Additional time can, and I fear most likely will, be added. If the CER or government misses deadlines, the project is not automatically approved. We need to determine whether these timelines will shorten the approval process or whether the clock will simply stop when the difficult parts begin for government. Another idea that deserves attention is the creation of the regions of national interest. Cabinet could designate an entire region and identify categories of projects that may qualify within it. This could matter in an area chock full of critical minerals or a major energy corridor. If government has already completed a regional assessment of water, wildlife and cumulative effects, later project reviews should not have to start from zero. This would not create an immediate fast track. Before a region can get such special treatment, the government would first have to complete a broader regional assessment. If the bill were to come into force, if it were to pass, the list of regions that qualify would be empty. The faster process would only become available later, after government has done the groundwork and designated a region. Who knows how long that will take, given the Liberal government's track record. Once again, implementation will determine whether this changes anything. After years of being told that the old system was efficient and predictable, we should not just accept that a new set of promises from the Liberal government is going to be the solution. We need answers because we cannot afford to get this wrong. Our country, our future and our prosperous nation are simply too important. Bill C-39 should be judged by a simple standard: Can a company with a project get a clear answer in a reasonable amount of time and then get to work? That is the test. Before Parliament passes this bill, we should be sure this legislation will pass that test.

Mr. Speaker, the government is correctly identifying the problems after we point them out. They are self-imposed problems, but the problem with the government is that all it ever sees is a nail to hit, and it always seems to hit it with a new bureaucracy. As my colleague outlined, whether it be housing, energy or anything else, all the government tries to do is build new government bureaucracies. It turns out, given that housing starts are down and that our oil and gas sector is struggling under this regime, it is time for a change. It is time for a Conservative economic agenda to get this country going.

Mr. Speaker, for millions of families, payday is no longer a chance to get ahead. It is simply the day to hopefully pay the bills. The National Payroll Institute says that more than half of working Canadians are spending every dollar they take home, leaving absolutely nothing to save, and only 18% say that their pay is keeping up with the cost of living. The Liberals seem to insist that their plan is working, but they are so clearly out of touch, and Canadians are out of money. Families are working harder and harder and falling further and further behind. When will the Liberals stop the pain and embrace our Conservative economic plan so that Canadians can afford to live again?

Mr. Speaker, it is an honour to rise for the first time in this fall session. I would like to talk about what it means to be an average Canadian. We all know there is a moment that has become so familiar for so many Canadians. Someone pulls up to a gas station, they get out of their car, they put the nozzle in their tank and they just stand there watching those two numbers race each other. One number shows how many litres they are getting, and the other shows how much money is disappearing out of their bank account. For a lot of families, there used to be a point where filling up was almost an afterthought. If someone needed gas, they stopped and got gas, but today, people notice every single dollar. There are two ways to measure the cost of living. The government looks at it like a speedometer, but families live with the odometer. Let me explain that. The speedometer tells us how fast prices are rising today. That is the inflation rate. The odometer tells us how far prices have travelled from where they started, and that is the number that Canadians cannot simply reset. We hear that inflation is now around 3%, and that sounds like good news. Slower inflation is certainly better than faster inflation, but Statistics Canada tells us that grocery prices are still 29% higher than they were five years ago. The speedometer has slowed down, but the odometer has in no way gone backward. That is what Canadians are feeling right now. We could put a hundred-dollar bill on someone's kitchen table and ask what that $100 bought for that family five years ago. We can then ask what that $100 would buy for them today. Nobody buys groceries with the consumer price index. They pay with real dollars, and those dollars simply do not stretch as far as they used to. That is the context in which we are debating Bill C-38 today. The regular federal excise tax is 10¢ a litre on gasoline and four cents on diesel. Under this legislation, those rates would remain at zero until January 31. However, then something curious would happen. On February 1, half of that tax would come back, and on April 1, the whole thing would come back. We are debating tax relief today, while the date for taking that relief away is already printed on the calendar. Our Conservative caucus has indicated that we will support keeping this relief in place, but this debate did not begin just this week. In April, Conservatives brought a motion before the House calling for the federal fuel excise tax to be removed for the rest of 2026, along with broader relief from federal costs on gasoline and diesel. That motion was unfortunately defeated, 192 votes to 134 votes. The issue was again raised in May. Members can disagree about how far relief should go or how long it should last, but the record is there. I think there is something else we should understand about fuel, particularly for those of us who represent rural Canada. There is a tax that people pay that never appears on any government form. It is the cost of distance. If somebody lives in a major city, there may be days where driving is simply an optional activity. That is not the reality for folks living in rural Canada. There is no subway running past the farmyard. The specialist for medical appointments is probably an hour or more away. The hockey rink one plays at is in the next town, and the away games are even farther, in the town beyond that. The hardware store might be 30 miles down the highway, and the part needed to get a combine moving again is most likely farther than that. There may as well be a line in the family budget called “the driving tax”. It is not because the government literally charges it, but because geography does. Every appointment takes fuel. Every grocery trip takes fuel. Every trip to work takes fuel for the vast majority of the folks I represent. For many seniors, a car is not just a luxury; it is independence. It is church on Sunday. It is seeing their grandchildren on the weekend. A senior cannot move the hospital closer because gasoline got too expensive for them to go to their appointments. A farmer cannot move the field closer to their home farmyard. A trucker cannot make Winnipeg and Calgary neighbours all of a sudden. Distance does not negotiate with the household budget. We can also think about one litre of diesel put into a tractor in Manitoba, the tractor that helps produce the crop. Next, the combine is running at about $250 an hour during harvest just to get the crop off, then another litre goes into the truck to haul the crop once it is off. There is fuel used again to get it to the processor. A truck takes the finished product to the distribution centre, and then another vehicle eventually delivers it to a store. Much of that cost is actually borne and eaten by the farmers themselves, but the consumer is ultimately paying the rest of it when buying the finished product. That is what makes fuel different from so many other household expenses. The cost moves through the entirety of the economy. A contractor's truck carries tools to a job site. A delivery van carries somebody's order. A semi carries food right across this great nation. Fuel is buried inside the cost of moving virtually everything that we enjoy day to day. That does not mean that a 10¢ tax reduction magically cuts 10¢ off the price of bread. Of course it does not, but the cost of moving those goods adds up. Even the government's own announcement points specifically to trucking, agriculture, food, housing, construction and delivery businesses when explaining who would benefit from this tax relief. Earlier this year, the government conducted what was almost a real-world economic experiment. For years we had to hear the Liberals argue about whether taxes at the pump really made much difference at all. Then, in April, the excise tax came off, and according to the government's own figures, gasoline prices fell by roughly 11¢ a litre on the very first day: tax off, prices down. Nobody thinks that the Government of Canada controls the world's price of oil. It cannot control every refinery shutdown, war, or international disruption, but government does control the taxes that it adds on top of those prices, and Canadians can tell the difference. What worries me about the larger affordability debate is that we sometimes talk as though inflation's having slowed down has repaired the damage from the inflation that came before it. It has not. Inflation works a little bit like a ratchet. Prices can move up very quickly, and they rarely return all the way to the place where they began. We can think of an elevator as another example. Over several years, the cost of living has taken the elevator up. Now the government points out that the elevator is moving up a little bit more slowly, but the family standing several floors above where it started may be forgiven for not celebrating just yet. That is why the same things that Canadians complained about being expensive a few years ago are still expensive today: food, housing, repairs, travel, fuel and just about everything in our day-to-day lives. The crisis changes shape, but the accumulated bill remains, and that brings me back to the April 1 date day etched in the calendar by the government and feared by Canadians. There is something odd about telling people that relief is needed today, while at the same time scheduling the tax to return just a few months from now, April Fools, except it is not a joke for Canadians. That is essentially where this policy, as drafted, leaves the country. The relief does last a little bit longer, but then the meter begins running again. Meanwhile, the grocery bill does not have an expiry date, and neither does the mortgage. The farmer will not just get to suspend planting next spring until diesel becomes cheaper for them. The senior does not get to postpone a medical appointment until the price at the pump improves. Families have to live in the economy every single day. There is a broader principle here that we should all remember: When the cost of living becomes difficult, governments instinctively start looking for something new to create, such as a new program, a new benefit, a new application or a new bureaucracy to administer the new program that they dreamt up. Sometimes that may be necessary, but sometimes there is a much simpler question worth asking first: Could government not just take less? A dollar that never leaves someone's pocket does not require an application form from the government to get it back. It does not require some administrative department in Ottawa, and it does not require somebody to qualify. It is simply still their dollar, as it should be. Bill C-38 would provide temporary relief from one federal tax. The larger affordability debate is nowhere near finished, though, because Canadians do not experience the economy through a monthly Statistics Canada release. They experience it when they open their wallet. They experience it when they know that $100 simply buys less. They experience it when the drive to town costs that much more. They experience it when a litre of diesel works its way through a farm, a truck and eventually to their grocery store shelf. The speedometer may tell us inflation has slowed down, and that is a good thing, but families are still looking at the odometer, and they know exactly how far we have travelled.

Mr. Speaker, Canadians should be happy that we have His Majesty's loyal opposition to put forward good ideas that have been at times embraced by the government, such as the extension of the excise tax, or putting it on to begin with. I wish I had the Hansard record to count the number of times that the member defended the carbon tax as neutral for families and said that everyone was better off. He stands here and takes some sort of credit, like it was his idea. Give me a break.