John Fraser, a former fisheries minister under prime minister Brian Mulroney, and later House Speaker, told The Hill Times the omnibus bill is a “mistake,” that the “politics is dumb,” that he doesn’t appreciate how the government casts critics of the process as “radical left-wingers,” and wondered what the House Finance Committee will know about “steelhead and salmon on the West Coast” when it studies Bill C-38.
“I think this is a mistake. When it comes to British Columbia, where salmon and steelhead are an icon and part of the very fabric of our sense of own home, our own particular homeland in Canada, these decisions should not be made by packing everything into a Finance Committee. They need to be made on the basis of a special hearing of some sort,” he told The Hill Times.
Mr. Fraser, a former Conservative MP who represented Vancouver South, B.C., from 1972 until 1993, said there are occasions when omnibus bills are necessary, but Bill C-38, the 425-page Budget Implementation Bill, is not one of them.
“I repeat that. This is not one of them. Any pretense that anybody makes that we can’t deal with our economic and fiscal issues other than an omnibus bill of this nature which includes a whole bunch of other things, all of which are important, is in my view just absolute nonsense,” he said.
The Budget Implementation Bill changes the Fisheries Act to focus on protecting only fish that “support commercial, recreational or aboriginal fisheries.”
Additionally, it would allow the federal government to pass responsibility for the Fisheries Act to provinces and change the rules as to what type of industrial or development work is allowed to cause destruction to fish habitat.
A former Fisheries and Oceans minister who was forced to resign in 1985 over the “Tainted Tuna” affair, but who went on to be a respected House Speaker, Mr. Fraser said he’s concerned about the changes to the Fisheries Act found in Bill C-38.
He’s not the only former Conservative Fisheries minister to state publicly that they are against the amendments that would essentially weaken the minister’s ability to protect fish and their habitat, especially on the west coast of British Columbia.
Former Fisheries minister Tom Siddon also criticized the government’s move to gut the Fisheries Act recently. He told CBC Radio’s The Current: “The minister of fisheries is the one remaining and most powerful person in Canada to protect this marvelous, historically important resource we have in Canada—our fishery. That’s his job. … This is a covert attempt to gut the Fisheries Act, and it’s appalling that they should be attempting to do this under the radar.”
Former Conservative MP and current Conservative leader in British Columbia John Cummins also criticized the changes: “There is that potential for serious damage to the fisheries resource if we move in the way that’s proscribed.”
The omnibus Bill C-38 also repeals Bill C-288, the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act, a private member’s bill passed in 2007 to keep the government accountable on implementing measures to meet the Kyoto Protocol emissions reduction levels.
Bill C-38 also repeals the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act and enacts a new one, which allows the environment minister to determine if environmental assessments are necessary for certain resource development projects. The bill also aims to reduce duplicate environmental assessments and allows the federal government to defer to provincial assessments if one is available. In addition, it amends the National Energy Board Act to allow Cabinet to make decisions on potential new “major pipelines” and limit regulatory reviews to two years. The bill gives the National Energy Board authority over “navigation in respect of pipelines and power lines that cross navigable waters.”
Randall Lewis from the Squamish First Nation in British Columbia said this move will “dramatically impact” salmon species throughout Canada. “That is very concerning,” he told The Hill Times last week. Although Bill C-38 says it will protect areas that are used by aboriginals, Mr. Lewis said it’s not the case.
“There’s nothing about protection in there because they’re looking at dramatically changing the wording with regards to habitat and protection of habitat and they’re more or less changing the act to accommodate industry, Enbridge pipelines, and what have you, to quickly get through the process of the Canadian Environmental Assessment Act,” he said.
Green Leader Elizabeth May (Saanich-Gulf Islands, B.C.) said that the changes to the Fisheries Act are “very worrying” because “it’s essentially destroying the ability of the federal government to do its job under the constitution to protect fisheries.”
The government’s rationale that if it’s not used it can be destroyed is wrong, Ms. May said, because everything feeds into one ecosystem.
“You can’t say that only certain types of fish count as fisheries,” she said. “These are ecosystems and fish that are small and unimportant to somebody are important to other fish, are important to the ecosystem so you can’t say that if there’s minnows in the water it doesn’t count. That’s part of a healthy ecosystem for that whole acquatic structure and if it’s not a commercial fish, a recreational fish, or an aboriginally important fish, they’re saying it doesn’t count. … This is destruction of the Fisheries Act in the interest of pipelines and mines and oilsands.”
NDP MP Fin Donnelly (New Westminster-Coquitlam, B.C.) agreed, saying the Conservative government does not “understand the concept of ecosystem health or biodiversity.”
“Make no mistake, these are radical and dangerous changes. Rather than prohibiting the harmful alteration, disruption and destruction of fish habitat, it would narrow habitat protection to apply to those activities that would harm fish that are part of a commercial, recreational or aboriginal fishery, or the fish that support such a fishery,” he said. “The government introduced the concept of ‘serious harm,’ which talks about killing fish and permanently altering habitat. The question that a judge would now be faced with is to determine what constitutes ‘permanent.’ Is that two years? Is that 10 years? Or is that 100 years?”
Mr. Fraser, who stressed that he’s been a Conservative for 63 years, said that although he still supports Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s (Calgary Southwest, Alta.) government, gutting the Fisheries Act is the wrong move.
Mr. Fraser noted that he was at the 25th anniversary celebration of the Pacific Salmon Foundation with several business leaders and Conservative supporters who are concerned about Canada’s fisheries.
“[It’s amazing] the number of people who came up and said to me, ‘Fraser, what the hell is the government doing with the Fisheries Act? I’m not making this up,” he said. “When you get two lifelong Conservatives like Tom Siddon and myself, who are prepared to go public with the very government we support, somebody ought to wake up.”
Mr. Lewis said if the bill is passed, the Conservatives will lose support, especially in B.C.
“A lot of people are thinking, wow, we’ve given this ministry the respect and the power of a majority government and what do they do? They start attacking the various things that have sustained us for thousands of years,” he said. “People are really thinking you know, are we going to vote for you again? Probably not. We want to get rid of these guys because when you get ultimate power like that they’re supposed to look at what we can do for our constituents including species that have sustained us for thousands of years. They’re moving bills and laws and legislation that are compromising everybody.”
Mr. Fraser said there will be a “political price” to pay if the government does not listen to Canadians.
He said his own MP, Conservative MP John Weston (West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country, B.C.), has done a good job of listening, and bringing constituents’ concerns to relevant ministers, but the process by which Bill C-38 is going through Parliament is not democratic. Mr. Fraser said the government didn’t go to B.C. to discuss how the amendments would impact the salmon fishery and if they had asked anyone who knew anything about the Fisheries Act, they would have told them that there are already sections in the act that the minister can use to deal with issues they think they are fixing.
Fisheries and Oceans Minister Keith Ashfield (Fredericton, N.B.) told the House during Question Period that the government is making improvements to the act. “We are focusing our fish and fish habitat protection rules on Canada’s fisheries, not in farmers’ ditches,” he said on May 15. “As a matter of fact, there are major improvements to the act that the opposition likes to ignore. There will be several improvements and conservation tools. We will be identifying ecologically sensitive areas, making Fisheries Act regulations enforceable and allowing for higher maximum penalties for rule breakers.”
Environment Minister Peter Kent (Thornhill, Ont.) also noted that the act will provide “enhanced protection” to fisheries.
“These include establishing ecologically sensitive areas, such as a critical spawning habitat for salmon or other species, and if any activities are proposed within these areas, proponents would be required to submit plans for review. The minister of Fisheries and Oceans may then require higher levels of protection for such areas,” he said in the House.
The House Finance Committee is currently studying the bill, but Mr. Fraser said it should be at least studied a various subcommittees with people who have the expertise to scrutinize the bill.
“How many people in the Finance Committee know anything about steelhead and salmon on the West Coast of British Columbia. I’ll bet you can’t find any,” Mr. Fraser said. “I might or might not [support the amendments if it were its own bill] but that’s not the point. Part of Parliamentary system is process. And, process has to respect the fact that we’re operating in a democracy. We’re not operating in a corporate system where orders have to be carried out no matter what you think of them. We’re operating in a democracy. And, it’s true that democracy can sometimes be inefficient, at least in the short term, and sometimes democracy can be very upsetting to a government, but that is our system. Good God, Canadians fought and died for it.”
Additionally, referring to the government’s refrain that environmentalists in Canada are radical left-wingers who are funded by international organizations, Mr. Fraser said: “I am not amused when anybody suggests that those of who want this process to be done properly are some sort of anti-Canadian radicals funded by foreign sources. That does not amuse me. … There are two things here. One, I’m very concerned from a policy point of view, they’re going in the wrong direction. The other thing is this. With an awful lot of ordinary people, I think the politics of what they’re doing is dumb.”
Meanwhile, last week, Conservative MP David Wilks (Kootenay-Columbia, B.C.) indicated that there are several backbench MPs who also disagree with the omnibus bill.
“I think you’ll find a barrage of Conservatives do hold your concerns and I am one of them,” he told constituents at a roundtable discussion on May 22. “I do believe some of (the provisions) should be separated out.”
In a video of the roundtable, Mr. Wilks said he would be willing to vote against the bill if 12 other Conservative MPs voted against it as well.
“Me doesn’t change the budget,” he said. “If I stand up and say ‘no,’ it still passes.” He noted that it’s difficult in the caucus to express dissent because MPs receive information after decisions have been made and Cabinet ministers tell them how to vote.
When asked if he would break party ranks to represent his constituents’ views, he said, “If you want me as an independent, I’ll do that.”
Hours after the story broke, however, Mr. Wilks posted a “clarification” on his website stating that he does in fact support the budget bill and is looking forward to seeing it passed.
“I support this bill and the jobs and growth measures that it will bring for Canadians in Kootenay-Columbia and right across the country,” he said.
Mr. Fraser said there is a conundrum when it comes to MPs standing up for their constituents or following the party line. He said if too many MPs break party ranks, the media will say the Prime Minister has no discipline, but then MPs are criticized for not expressing their own opinions.
“I know you have to have party discipline and if I were the Prime Minister, I would be a disciplinarian but there’s another aspect to this and that is where is Canadian industry being ground to a halt today if we take a few weeks to properly look at these amendments? If you’re talking about the oil and gas industry for industry, the oil and gas industry has grown and grown and grown and it all happened under the existing Fisheries Act,” he said. “I’m not some left-wing loony. I’m a Conservative. I’m a real Conservative and nobody can pretend to be a Conservative if they are not a conservationist.”
Original Article
Source: hill times
Author: Bea Vongdouangchanh
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