By Paul Withers
CBC NEWS

Trudeau government legislation that enshrines the independence of Atlantic Canada's inshore fishing fleets and enhances protections for fish stocks and fish habitat has cleared the Senate.

The news is a relief to Martin Mallet.

"This is great news. We've been waiting for this for a long while," said Mallet, executive director of the Maritime Fishermen's Union.

Inshore fishery associations like his lobbied hard for Bill C-68, which overhauls the Fisheries Act.

It will give the teeth of law to two key policies designed to prevent inshore fisheries — including lobster — from ending up in the hands of a few large companies.

The owner-operator and fleet separation policies keep commercial fishing licences in the hands of small enterprises and prevent companies from both fishing and processing the catch.

"This will protect smaller operators from corporate takeover," Mallet said in an interview from his office in Shediac, N.B. "It will protect our small coastal communities."

Conservatives won't delay C-68 in CommonsBill C-68 passed the Senate Thursday with Conservative support after Liberals agreed to remove the so called "water flow" amendment from Green Party Leader Elizabeth May, added in the House of Commons.

Conservatives warned it could give Fisheries and Oceans the ability to treat industrial, agricultural and municipal water flow locations as fish habitat.

A spokesperson for Conservative fishery critic MP Todd Doherty said Conservatives will not delay C-68 when it reaches the Commons.

The party still believes the bill is flawed — it restores habitat protections removed by the Harper government — but Conservatives support owner-operator and fleet separation policies in Atlantic Canada.

Fisheries groups warned Conservatives during the lobby campaign that Conservative candidates in Atlantic Canada would pay a price at the polls in the upcoming federal election if they vote against Bill C-68.

On Thursday, just three Conservative senators voted against it in the Senate.

Fish protectionsEnvironmentalists were also heartened to see the bill move to the House of Commons, where it is very likely to pass before Parliament rises.

In addition to protecting habitat, the new Fisheries Act also imposes new requirements on the Department of Fisheries and Oceans to more carefully manage fisheries.

"This is one of our oldest pieces of legislation: 1868. And this is the first time we are going to see something that says sustainably manage our fish stocks and rebuild stocks that are depleted — first time," says Robert Rangeley, science director of Oceana Canada, a marine conservation group.

"So this is a really important piece of legislation."

Minister expects new Fisheries Act to passIn North Vancouver, federal Fisheries Minister Jonathan Wilkinson also welcomed the Senate vote.

He is on the verge of delivering a signature piece of legislation that fulfils a 2015 election commitment to restore lost protections for fish and fish habitat.
​
"It's a very important promise from an environmental perspective. It is one of the most important promises that we made with respect to fisheries and oceans and so from my perspective this is a very important milestone," Wilkinson said.

By John Paul Tasker
CBC NEWS

While the Senate's transport committee recommended the upper house defeat the bill outright, a coalition of Independent and Liberal senators has cobbled together enough votes to rescue legislation to implement the government's planned ban on oil tankers along B.C.'s northern coast.

The outcome was far from certain after the committee that studied the legislation recommended against passing the Liberal plan. The committee issued a scathing report this week saying that, if passed, the bill would stoke a nascent separatist movement in Western Canada, and accused the government of unfairly targeting Alberta's oilpatch at a time of constrained pipeline capacity and cratering oil prices.

The strongly worded report — penned by the committee's chair, Conservative Saskatchewan Sen. David Tkachuk — prompted a backlash of sorts Wednesday night from other senators who called it overly partisan.

Senators rejected the committee's report by a vote of 38 to 53, with one abstention. Now, senators are expected to make amendments at the third reading phase of the legislative process before sending the bill back to the Commons for approval.

The Senate also voted this evening on Bill C-69, the government's controversial overhaul of the environmental assessment process. The Senate's energy committee passed more than 180 amendments to that bill that would, among other things, limit the environment minister's ability to interfere in the regulatory process and stop and start project timelines.

Having passed the Senate, C-69 now returns to the House of Commons with all 180 amendments. 

While not explicitly written into the Liberal government's 2015 platform, then-third party leader Justin Trudeau vowed to institute a moratorium on oil tankers docking at ports along the northern B.C. coast when unveiling his plan for the environment at a Vancouver-area event in June, 2015.

In describing the legislation, Tkachuk said it is "not as advertised" — that it is not a "moratorium" at all because there is no set timeline, and should be described as a ban. (The Conservative Party recently launched a series of ads with the tagline, "Justin Trudeau, not as advertised.")

In the report, Tkachuk said the legislation was motivated not by a desire to protect the pristine Great Bear rainforest but rather by electoral considerations. He said Trudeau is willing to undermine the Prairie economy to court votes elsewhere.

Tkachuk said Trudeau is "targeting one region, where the political rewards for the government of the day are few, in order to please voters in other regions of Canada — regions where the government of the day has far greater potential to win seats.

"Your committee notes the ruling political party has historically been unable to win a significant number of seats in the region targeted by this bill, and that all credible polls indicate the ruling party will be unable to win a significant number of seats in the upcoming federal election."

Independent Quebec Sen. Andre Pratte said that, while he opposed parts of the tanker ban bill and will offer amendments at the third reading stage, he thought Tkachuk's report did a disservice to the committee's deliberations on the legislation.

While many reports are produced with a degree of consensus — with contributions from members of the committee from different parties — the committee's deputy chair, Independent Quebec Sen. Julie Miville-Dechêne, said there was no such offer from Tkachuk.

"He said no to any steering committee, as usual. We were therefore unable to decide in a collegial manner how to go about writing the report. My only priority then became to ensure that whatever report was prepared would be put before the Senate promptly so that we can all vote on it," the senator told her colleagues.

"I therefore urge you to emphatically reject this 21-page report, which does a disservice to the Senate and does not do justice to the diversity of opinion among the 139 witnesses who appeared before us."

However, while she was critical of the Tkachuk report, Miville-Dechêne and other dissenting senators did not draft a minority report to respond to the Tory-penned document.

Independent Manitoba Sen. Murray Sinclair said the transport committee is clearly "dysfunctional," given how much bickering there was between members at its meetings and in the chamber Wednesday.

"It's appearing to me, from being here, that this committee did not function properly and did not function in a collegial matter. I therefore consider it to be a dysfunctional committee," the former judge said.

"The committee did not appear to be able to get along very well in its work and deliberations, and that causes me concern because now we are being asked to be parties to this report as members of the chamber."

The "dysfunction" label prompted claims of unparliamentary language from the Conservative opposition, with one senator saying the description "defamed" the work of the committee.

Independent Quebec Sen. Rosa Galvez said the mood at the transport committee, of which she is a member, was "extremely unpleasant" under Tkachuk's leadership.

She said the committee's travel, to locations in B.C., Alberta, and Saskatchewan, was essentially a waste of time because dissenting voices were all but excluded from Tkachuk's final report.

"A cost-benefit analysis of this report would be absolutely scandalous," Galvez said.

"Overall, I got the feeling that our work was being undermined and even sabotaged. Rather than conducting an in-depth analysis of Bill C-48, of its weaknesses and limitations, so that we could suggest amendments and make observations that could be effective in improving it, we created a hostile and aggressive atmosphere that prevented the legislation from being studied in the best interests of Canadians."

Galvez said her colleague, Independent Alberta Sen. Paula Simons — who sided with the Tories to vote down Bill C-48 at committee — was "harassed" to vote a certain way.

Tkachuk defended the committee's work and the report it produced.

"This was not a waste of time. This was the Senate at its best," he said of the committee's travels.

• Coastal First Nations slam senators, say upper house doesn't have 'legitimacy' to kill tanker ban

• Jason Kenney now says Alberta can live with amended C-69 environmental assessment bill

• Garneau says he's open to amendments as opposition to B.C. tanker ban bill mounts

He said the bill, which would ban tankers capable of carrying more than 12,500 metric tons of oil from an area that stretches from the northern tip of Vancouver Island to the Alaska border, is "so egregiously bad that it should be stopped in its tracks."

"Your committee has concluded from the varied and quite passionate testimony put before it, from a broad range of witnesses who appeared in Ottawa, British Columbia, Alberta and Saskatchewan, that Bill C-48 is both divisive and discriminatory," Tkachuk said.

He said the legislation, which does nothing about oil tanker traffic in Eastern Canada, serves only to bolster a growing Western Canadian separatist movement.

"The feeling of resentment, I can tell you, is palpable and any legislation that pours fuel on that particular fire should not be allowed to proceed," Tkachuk said.

He said the bill will cost "us all," as it imperils the future of Alberta's oilpatch and conventional oil development in Saskatchewan — two major economic drivers for the Canadian economy.

If enacted, the ban would frustrate future pipeline projects like the now-defunct Northern Gateway project, or the proposed Indigenous-led Eagle Spirit pipeline.
​
"Your committee strongly maintains that targeting one region of Canada for economic punishment is unconstitutional and destructive to the fabric of Canadian federalism," Tkachuk said.

By Marco Vigliotti
iPOLITICS

​The Senate has passed legislation instituting new safeguards for fish and their habitat that includes government sponsored amendments banning shark fin imports.

Bill C-68 passed third reading in the Upper Chamber Thursday afternoon and will now be returned to the House, which must sign off on the amendments before it becomes law.

The bill aims to restore protections removed from the Fisheries Act by the previous Conservative government in 2012 while incorporating new safeguards. It also directs the minister of fisheries and oceans to manage fish stocks sustainably and put rebuilding plans in place for depleted stocks.

Prior to 2012, the Fisheries Act protected all fish and fish habitat in Canada, though this was changed by the Harper government in a bid to make life easier for farmers who would have to navigate regulatory red tape to win approval to alter small water bodies or clear out drainage ditches.

BACKGROUNDER: Fisheries Act overhaul clears House of Commons

Sen. Peter Harder, the government’s representative in the Senate, moved 28 amendments to Bill C-68 last month during clause-by-clause consideration by the Senate fisheries and oceans committee.

Among other changes, the amendments incorporated provisions in Bill S-238 banning the practice of shark finning and the import and export of shark fins, with the government worried that bill will not pass into law before Parliament rises for the next election. They also touched upon Bill S-203 which would ban the taking of whales, dolphins and porpoises into captivity. Specifically, the changes would make it mandatory to have a permit for the importation and exportation of the class of marine mammals, known as cetaceans.

Harder’s amendments to Bill C-68 also include a provision that would exclude human-made agricultural waterways from being designated as a “fish habitat.”

The senator called the definition as it stands in the bill “overly broad.” He said such waterways currently follow environmental codes of practice.

READ MORE: Shark finning, cetacean captivity amendments could be folded into C-68

SOURCE: https://ipolitics.ca/2019/06/06/amended-bill-c-68-passes-third-reading-in-senate/

By Peter Mazereeuw
THE HILL TIMES

Several high-profile government bills are entering the final stretch of scrutiny by Senators this week, with a decision on whether or not to kill the controversial tanker ban bill, C-48, on the docket, and third reading debate on the government’s sweeping environmental impact assessment bill, C-69, expected to begin early this week.

The government has also continued to introduce new bills in the House of Commons as recently as last week, with just 15 sitting days now left in the House and a handful more than that in the Senate. It’s possible not all of them will pass through both Chambers and into law before Parliament rises for the summer for the election campaign without negotiations and cooperation among groups both in the House and Senate.

The House is scheduled to sit until June 21 and the Senate until June 28. The next election is expected to happen on Oct. 21 and the House will not be back before then, so there’s a legislative push on for the government over the next three weeks.

The government tabled legislation to implement the CUSMCA trade agreement with the United States and Mexico just last week. Bill C-100 is still at second reading in the House, and would have to pass through a committee study and multiple rounds of debate before it arrived in the Senate to begin that process anew.

The New Democrats in the House signalled last week that they won’t make it easy for the government to move the bill along quickly without using time allocation, when they voted against a motion preceding C-100 that authorized government spending to implement that trade deal. The Conservatives and Liberals voted in favour of the motion.

However, should Bill C-100 make it to the Senate, members of the Red Chamber should already be familiar with it, said Independent Senator Raymonde Saint-Germain (De la Vallière, Que.), the deputy facilitator of the Independent Senators Group.

“We’ve been expecting it for a long time, we know what’s in it. We can find [the Foreign Affairs and International Trade Committee] enough time to study it,” she said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Que.) and U.S. Vice-President Mike Pence discussed the implementation of the trade deal during the latter’s visit to Ottawa last week. Mr. Pence said his administration was pushing for U.S. legislators to implement the bill this summer.

Government House Leader Bardish Chagger (Waterloo, Ont.) didn’t include C-100 in her response to the Thursday Question last week, meaning it may not come up for debate this week.

Government House leaders often strike deals with their opposition counterparts to get unanimous consent to advance certain bills through several stages simultaneously late in a legislative session, but the NDP’s vote on the spending motion for C-100 means that is unlikely in this case. The government could also recall the House of Commons in the summer to deal with C-100, if it wants to wait for the U.S. to ratify the trade deal before Canada does the same.

Sen. Saint-Germain said she didn’t know whether the Senate would have enough time to study and vote on other recently-introduced bills before it rises. Bill C-99, to change the citizenship oath to recognize the rights of Indigenous Peoples, and C-98, to create an oversight body for the Canada Border Services Agency, are both still at second reading in the House.

Immigration Minister Ahmed Hussen (York South-Weston, Ont.) told reporters last week that “we are very hopeful for a multi-party approach in support” of the citizenship oath bill.

“We are proceeding forward by presenting a bill, but also hoping that with the other parties supporting this, we can move quickly towards passage,” he said.

When asked whether the Senate would have enough time to deal with bills recently introduced into the House once they progressed to the Upper Chamber, Senator Peter Harder (Ottawa, Ont.) the government’s representative in the Senate, said “the Senate will do what the Senate needs to do.”

A spokesperson for Conservative Senate Leader Larry Smith (Saurel, Que.), Karine Leroux, said in an emailed statement that “these last-minute bills show a lack of planning by the Trudeau government. The Official Opposition in the Senate will act responsibly and do its due diligence by reviewing the latest bills proposed by the Trudeau government.”

Senate to vote on killing tanker ban bill

The Senate is expected to vote early this week on a report from its Transport Committee on Bill C-48, a bill that would fulfill a Liberal election promise to ban oil tanker traffic from the northern B.C. coast, making permanent a voluntary moratorium that is already in place there.

The Senate Transport Committee recommended that the Senate kill the bill in its report, finalized late last week. Senators on the committee came to a tie vote on whether to proceed with the bill. Tie votes count as a loss, meaning the vote determined that the committee would recommend that Senators do not allow the bill to go ahead.

If the Senate accepts the committee’s report, Bill C-48 will die, in what would be an exceptionally rare move by the Upper Chamber to defeat a government bill. If the Senate does not accept the committee’s report, the bill would go on to be debated at third reading, where Senators could move amendments to the controversial bill, which Alberta Premier Jason Kenney and others have said would harm the oil and gas industry. 

If Senators do amend the bill at third reading, it could set the stage for a ping-pong battle between the two Chambers. Transport Minister Marc Garneau (Notre-Dame-de-Grâce-Westmount, Que.) has rejected the idea of amending the bill to create exemptions to the moratorium zone, suggesting in front of Senate Transport Committee in May that opening up corridors for shipping oil on the coast would undermine the purpose of the bill, since spilled oil could spread far and wide through the water.

Sen. Saint-Germain, a member of the Transport Committee, said she couldn’t predict how Independent Senators would vote on the committee’s report when it comes before the Chamber at report stage. The report was agreed to on division, meaning that not all committee members agreed with it, but those who opposed did not force a formal vote.

“I anticipate very interesting discussions,” she said.

Independents collectively form a majority in the Chamber, but are not whipped or formally tied to any political party.   

The Senate Conservatives will try to convince Senators to accept the committee’s report and kill Bill C-48, said Conservative Senator David Tkachuk (Saskatchewan), the chair of the Transport Committee. The Conservatives may bring forward amendments to the bill if it makes it to third reading, he said.

Independent Senator Elaine McCoy (Alberta) penned an op-ed in The Globe and Mail late last week, urging her colleagues to kill C-48, and Independent Senator Doug Black (Alberta) said he agreed with her via Twitter. Independent Senator Paula Simons (Alberta) voted against proceeding with the bill at the Transport Committee.

Senators green-light overhaul of C-69

Senators agreed late last week to pass Bill C-69, on reforming the environmental impact assessment process, through report stage, meaning they effectively endorsed the 187 amendments to the bill made by the Senate Environment Committee.

That bill has also been widely criticized by conservative politicians and resource industry groups, among others, for everything from technical errors to potentially causing harm to the resource industry. The Environment Committee’s amendments ranged from minor changes to those that would take discretionary power over assessments away from the federal environment minister, and changes that environmental groups say would make environmental reviews too industry-friendly, for example, putting industry regulators back in charge of review panels conducting assessments, and ensuring the economic impact of a project is taken into account in an assessment.

The Senate agreed to pass the committee’s report on division, meaning some Senators disagreed with the report, but weren’t willing to force a recorded vote on it. Third reading debate on Bill C-69 will likely begin early this week, and the Senate Conservatives are considering putting forward one or more new technical amendments at that stage.

The government fisheries and fish habitat bill, C-68, is also at third reading in the Senate, as is Bill C-77, to reform the the military justice system. Senate leaders agreed hold a third reading vote on C-77 by June 6.

Baylis’ urges PROC to get Members’-rights motion back to House

Liberal MP Frank Baylis (Pierrefonds-Dollard, Que.) is urging MPs on the Procedure and House Affairs Committee to do a short study of his private member’s motion to change the standing orders, M-231, and get it back to the House in time for a vote, before it dies on the order paper with the summer break and dissolution of Parliament for this fall’s election.

Mr. Baylis testified before PROC late last week, as the committee held its first hearing on the motion, which would establish a second debating Chamber for the House to deal with private member’s business, and would change the standing orders in several ways to take power out of the hands of party officers like the whips, and put it into the hands of backbench MPs—including doing away with speaking lists, through which the whips decide who gets to speak in the House and when.

Mr. Baylis’ motion had also been before the House of Commons as a whole for consideration, but he missed the first hour of debate on the motion in the House last week after making a mistake with his scheduling, he said. Because he missed the debate, the motion died, making PROC Mr. Baylis’ last chance to revive it.

Mr. Baylis told the committee members that many of the ideas proposed in the motion have been examined by MPs before, and noted that PROC had already done a separate study on establishing a second Chamber for the House. He told The Hill Times that he had received positive feedback from the Conservatives, NDP, and Liberal whip Mark Holland (Ajax, Ont.) about the motion. He said there was nonetheless some “timidity” about making big changes to the way the House does its business, and that he wanted PROC to complete a study on the motion so that all MPs would have a chance to vote on it in the Chamber before the summer.

peter@hilltimes.com

Status of government bills

​House of Commons

Second reading:

• C-5, An Act to Repeal Division 20 of Part 3 of the Economic Action Plan 2015 Act, No. 1
• C-12, An Act to amend the Canadian Forces Members and Veterans Re-establishment and Compensation Act
• C-27, An Act to amend the Pension Benefits Standards Act, 1985
• C-28, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (victim surcharge)
• C-32, An Act related to the repeal of Section 159 of the Criminal Code
• C-33, An Act to amend the Canada Elections Act
• C-34, An Act to amend the Public Service Labour Relations Act
• C-38, An Act to amend an Act to amend the Criminal Code (exploitation and trafficking in persons)
• C-39, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (unconstitutional provisions)
• C-42, Veterans Well-being Act
• C-43, An Act respecting a payment to be made out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund to support a pan-Canadian artificial intelligence strategy
• C-52, Supporting Vested Rights Under Access to Information Act
• C-56, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and the Abolition of Early Parole Act
• C-87, Poverty Reduction Act
• C-94, An Act respecting certain payments to be made out of the Consolidated Revenue Fund
• C-98, An Act to amend the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Act and the Canada Border Services Agency Act
• C-99, An Act to amend the Citizenship Act
• C-100, An Act to implement the Agreement between Canada, the United States of America, and the United Mexican States

Report stage:

• C-88, An Act to amend the Mackenzie Valley Resource Management Act and the Canada Petroleum Resources Act
• C-92, An Act respecting First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children, youth, and families
• C-93, An Act to provide no-cost, expedited record suspensions for simple possession of cannabis
• C-97, Budget Implementation Act, 2019, No. 1

Consideration of amendments made by the Senate:

• C-58, An Act to amend the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act and to make consequential amendments to other Acts
• C-59, An Act respecting national security matters

Senate

Senate pre-study:

• C-92, An Act respecting First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children, youth, and families
• C-97, Budget Implementation Act, 2019, No. 1

Committee:

• C-48, Oil Tanker Moratorium Act
• C-75, An Act to amend the Criminal Code, the Youth Criminal Justice Act, and other Acts
• C-78, An Act to amend the Divorce Act, the Family Orders and Agreements Enforcement Assistance Act, and the Garnishment, Attachment, and Pension Diversion Act
• C-82, Multilateral Instrument in Respect of Tax Conventions Act
• C-84, An Act to amend the Criminal Code (bestiality and animal fighting)
• C-91, Indigenous Languages Act

Report stage:

• C-83, An Act to amend the Corrections and Conditional Release Act and another Act

Third reading

• C-68, An Act to amend the Fisheries Act
• C-69, An Act to enact the Impact Assessment Act and the Canadian Energy Regulator Act, to amend the Navigation Protection Act
• C-77, An Act to amend the National Defence Act to make related and consequential amendments to other Acts

Awaiting Royal Assent

• C-71, An Act to amend certain Acts and Regulations in relation to firearms
• C-81, Accessible Canada Act

READ MORE: https://www.hilltimes.com/2019/06/03/senate-to-decide-on-fate-of-tanker-ban-liberals-leaving-u-s-mexico-trade-bill-until-last-minute/202345