As you may have heard, the Carney federal government has introduced a very controversial piece of legislation comprising two parts. The first part deals with federal measures to reduce interprovincial trade barriers, something that most businesses and Canadians support. But that’s not the contentious part. The second part of Bill C-5 involves giving the federal Liberal government the ability to override other legislation to enable major projects to be approved more quickly as the government would effectively be able to ignore most if not all of the federal regulatory barriers that have stood in their way in the recent past. The notion of streamlining approvals for major resource and infrastructure projects is a positive development after a decade of Liberal rule which slowed them down excessively, but empowering any government to be able to override legislation at their discretion is not the way to accomplish this.
C-5 is officially called “One Canadian Economy: An Act to enact the Free Trade and Labour Mobility in Canada Act and the Building Canada Act.” And who could possibly disagree with improving trade and labour mobility or building Canada? As usual with government legislation these days, the title of the Bill sounds great, but the devil is in the details. Firstly, it is no accident that the two parts of the Bill refer to different issues but are bundled together for a reason. The first part involving better trade and mobility among the provinces is packaged along with the second part, which gives the federal government almost unprecedented powers in peace time, because if opposition parties vote against the bill they can be accused of not supporting better trading relationships within Canada, and who would ever want to do that?
A sensible solution would be to separate the two parts into two different pieces of legislation, but that wouldn’t satisfy the Liberals’ desire to set a political trap for the opposition parties. It’s a shame that so much Parliamentary business these days seems to be geared to partisan political gain instead of doing the right thing for Canada.
Another irony is that the second part of the Bill would give the Liberal government power to override pieces of legislation that those very same Liberals put in place themselves over the past decade. Perhaps the Bill should be called “Please forget what we Liberals have done since 2015, as we would now like the right to override that whenever we feel like it.” Given that many of these same Liberals were perfectly okay with demolishing the Canadian economy and the standard of living of Canadians over the last 10 years, it’s pretty difficult to concede that we should now trust them to be able to ride roughshod over legislation today.
Furthermore, if the Liberals truly believe that legislation they supported in the past – things like the emissions cap on the oil and gas industry, the tanker ban in northern B.C., the industrial carbon tax, the impact assessment act and others – was so wrong that they now want the power to override these laws, why not just get rid of them completely? It seems these Liberals still want to retain the damaging laws, just have the ability to ignore them when they feel like it. Doesn’t sound very responsible, and leaves far too much up to the subjective discretion of a government that has not proved trustworthy in the past.
Imagine the perspective of a potential investor to Canada. We have seen our foreign and domestic investment plummet over the past decade because of bad Liberal policy that hamstrung our economy and massively delayed major resource and other projects. Lack of investment has been a major contributor to Canada’s dismal economic performance for years. Investors will see that the government wants the power to ignore laws it has put in place in the past yet won’t remove those laws. Will that inspire investor confidence? Highly unlikely.
Another key issue is the timeline involved. The Carney Liberal government chose to only have the House of Commons sit for about three weeks before going off on summer vacation. When they introduced Bill C-5, they only permitted a few days for its discussion in Committee. A Bill that contains this kind of dictatorial power for any government warrants much more than a few days of consideration. The fact that Carney clearly wants to rush this Bill through without adequate study speaks volumes about his desire for secrecy, his disrespect for Parliament and his not wanting Canadians to really understand what he is doing. We have seen this trait in Carney before, as he has resisted any disclosure of his own personal financial affairs and what conflicts of interests will arise as government decisions in a number of areas could well serve to enrich him personally. This should raise all kinds of concerns for every Canadian about how Carney wants to conduct government.
This writer appeared before the federal Transportation Committee of the House of Commons earlier this week and made all of these points. Apparently, the Conservatives plan to support this outrageous Liberal Bill because they don’t want to fall into the partisan political trap that is being set for them. Even if the Bill does pass this week, let’s hope it gets tied up in the Senate as it is truly a bad piece of legislation that accords an untrustworthy, incompetent and secretive federal Liberal government with far too much power for too long a period of time.
She has published numerous articles in journals, magazines & other media on issues such as free trade, finance, entrepreneurship & women business owners. Ms. Swift is a past President of the Empire Club of Canada, a former Director of the CD Howe Institute, the Canadian Youth Business Foundation, SOS Children’s Villages, past President of the International Small Business Congress and current Director of the Fraser Institute. She was cited in 2003 & 2012 as one of the most powerful women in Canada by the Women’s Executive Network & is a recipient of the Queen’s Silver & Gold Jubilee medals.
