Senate Hearings on Bill C-69
Fraudulent
Claims
About New
Impact
Assessment Legislation
- Peggy Morton -
The Senate Standing Committee on Energy, the
Environment
and Natural Resources began its hearings on Bill C-69 on February
5.[1] Bill C-69 is an
omnibus bill which will replace the National Energy Board with
the Canadian Energy Regulator and establish the Impact
Assessment Agency of Canada as the agency to carry out impact
assessments
on projects such as pipelines, electricity transmission lines,
and mines (see here).
The
Committee will now go on a nine-city tour, and submit its final
report by May 9, after which the bill will go to third reading in
the Senate.
The full title of Bill C-69 is 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. It establishes the Impact
Assessment Agency as the authority responsible for
impact assessments. The bill states that its purpose is to
"provide for a process for assessing the environmental, health,
social and economic effects of designated projects with a view to
preventing certain adverse effects and fostering
sustainability."
The energy oligarchs and monopoly media have
painted
Bill
C-69 as a monstrous attack on the energy industry, even its very
death knell. Writing in the Calgary Herald, columnist
Licia Corbella stated, "If you think it's hard to get any
significant resource project built in Canada now, just wait.
Justin Trudeau's federal government has dreamed up a bill so
destructive it just might be the bookend to his famous father's
disastrous and infamous National Energy Program. Also in the Herald,
columnist
Don
Braid
said
that
the
bill
is
a
"grave
danger
to
the
Trans
Mountain
pipeline
... This beast should be
ritually slaughtered."
Martha Hall Findlay, President of the Canada West
Foundation and a former Liberal Member of Parliament said that if
Bill
C-69 becomes law, Canada could "Kiss our investment climate
goodbye.
Investors -- domestic, foreign, current, potential -- their
commentary
is overwhelming. They say, 'if this passes, we're going
elsewhere.'"
The Trudeau government for its part has presented
Bill
C-69 as a vast improvement over the existing legislation enacted
under
the Harper government in 2012, when it is actually quite similar.
These
improvements are said to include a planning process which will
take
into account and place greater emphasis on the impacts on the
rights of
the Indigenous peoples in Canada. Second, rules around who can
get
intervenor status would revert to the pre-2012 arrangements.
Harper's
2012 legislation restricted intervenor status to people directly
affected by a project (e.g. the pipeline crosses their land).
Third, a
number of considerations have been added to those which the
Impact
Assessment Agency must take into account.
It is all a fraud, and neither claim has any
foundation
in fact. After all the hyperbole, the Canadian Association of
Petroleum
Producers (CAPP) has now declared that it doesn't want the bill
killed
after all. Killing the bill would "tear up years of work and not
provide any more certainty to the industry," stated Tim McMillan,
President of CAPP. Senator Grant Mitchell who sponsored the bill
in the
Senate said he is open to amendments, as are the prime minister
and
environment minister, confirming that the fix is in. The energy
oligarchs actually don't want to keep the current legislation
brought
in by the Harper government to meet their demands at that time,
but to
further degrade the regulatory process. CAPP's "aspirational
goals" set
out in its Alberta "elections platform" call for total time to
get a
project approved to be cut by 50 per cent and limits placed on
Cabinet
authority to "stop the clock" on a project. As well, the cost to
industry should be slashed and the already enormous pay-the-rich
schemes increased. Concerned citizens, including scientists,
should
continue to be prevented from having intervenor status at the
impact
assessment hearings.
The context for all this is the frenzied
competition
for
control of resources and markets and the grandiose plans of the
energy oligarchs with oil sands assets to displace their
"competitors," particularly in markets on the U.S. Gulf Coast and
California. CAPP says six new pipelines are needed in order to
more than double oil sands production, replacing Venezuelan oil
on the Gulf Coast and imports from the Middle East and elsewhere
in California. There is much talk of Asian markets in order to
deflect from the reality of increased reliance on exports to the
U.S.
It is the well-known road of boom and bust and
jobless
"recovery." Canada's resources and the work-time of Canadians are
used in the violent competition of the international cartels and
in service to the U.S. war machine and economy, necessarily
leading to destruction and insecurity through war, sanctions,
"regime-change" and other means. The social and natural
environment, the need to take measures to deal with climate
change, and the rights of the Indigenous peoples are all to be
sacrificed to enrich the tiny minority. It is a direction
opposite to that required to build a self-reliant economy based
on meeting the needs of the people with trade for mutual
benefit.
The desperation of governments to do the bidding
of the
energy oligarchs and big banks and the state arrangements which
are made to benefit private interests shows the depth of the
crisis facing the cartel parties and ruling circles. There it is
in plain sight. It is not a pretty sight, but the more the cartel
parties and state apparatus are shown to serve the rich and
maintain their class privilege, the more the need for renewal of
the democracy reveals itself. Who decides has become the crucial
question and the challenge facing the working class is to bring
forward
their own Worker Politicians and a Workers' Opposition in the
Parliament.
This article was published in
Volume 49 Number 8 - March 9, 2019
Article Link:
Senate Hearings on Bill C-69: Fraudulent
Claims
About New
Impact
Assessment Legislation - Peggy Morton
Website: www.cpcml.ca
Email: editor@cpcml.ca
|
