Face of Nation : Alberta Senator, however, defends reworked C-69 as ‘better bill than the status quo’
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney says the province will challenge the passage of two controversial federal bills in the courts.
Bill C-69, which changes Canada’s environmental assessment process, and Bill C-48, which bans tanker traffic from a stretch of B.C.’s north coast, were both passed Thursday night in the Senate.
“The passage of these two bills not only undermines Canada’s economy but also the Canadian federation,” said Kenney in news release.
“Their passage brings us closer to moving forward with a referendum on a constitutional amendment to eliminate equalization from the Canadian constitution. If Albertans cannot develop our resources within the federation, then we should not be expected to pay the bills in the federation.”
During the provincial election, Kenney had used the federal equalization formula, established when he was a federal cabinet minister, as a political cudgel against the Trudeau Liberals.
The province can’t unilaterally pull out of the equalization program.
Kenney said C-48 is a “prejudicial attack” on Alberta that only targets one product: bitumen. Oil moving through the recently approved Trans Mountain pipeline will not move through that section of the coastline.
On C-69, Kenney said it’s a “flagrant violation of the exclusive constitutional jurisdiction of provinces to control the development of their natural resources.”
The premier’s discontent with the passage of the two bills was echoed by an industry group.
The Canadian Energy Pipeline Association (CEPA) said in a release Friday that Bill C-69 becoming law will make the prospects of any new major pipeline developments bleak.
“Bill C-69 does not create the clarity and certainty necessary for proponents of major new pipeline projects to risk bringing them forward,” the industry group said.
The legislation imposes new requirements for consulting affected Indigenous communities, widens public participation in the review process and requires climate change to be considered when major national resource-exploitation and transportation projects are being evaluated.
CEPA said it’s unfortunate that the Senate turned down an opportunity to make the assessment process bill more workable for the oil and gas industry by voting down the majority of the amendments that had been proposed.
The Senate made more than 200 amendments to that bill earlier this month, but the government accepted just 99 of them, mostly to do with reducing ministerial discretion to intervene in the review process.
However, independent Alberta Senator Paula Simons says the amendments agreed to by Conservatives, Independents, Liberal and unaffiliated senators have led to a hugely improved piece of legislation.
Simons said it’s not widely understood just how vastly different the final version of Bill C-69 is from its original version.
“To get the government to accept 99 Senate amendments to a bill, it’s nearly unprecedented,” she said.
“It’s a better bill than what came before us. And more importantly, it’s a better bill than the status quo.”
Simons said that while the bill as originally written required the assessment process to examine only possible negative impacts of projects, the reworked version will see the regulator take into account a project’s potential positive impacts on the economy or society.
She said the bill now also includes wording that the approval process must safeguard Canadian competitiveness.
“And this is a change that cascades all through the bill,” she said.
