Greenpeace was on Parliament Hill this week to warn of the dangers posed by Bill C-5 (the Building Canada Act) and urge legislators to take it back to the drawing board.
The minority Liberal government – with the support of the Conservatives – are bypassing regular Parliamentary procedures to rubberstamp legislation that fast-tracks vaguely-defined “national interest” projects. Bill C-5 would allow Cabinet to sidestep long-standing environmental protections, silence communities, and violate Indigenous rights in order to ram projects through to the benefit of multi-billion dollar corporations.
Even a Liberal MP is saying that his government “is proposing to shut down democratic debate, curtail committee scrutiny and jam the bill through the legislature” in a way that would make former prime minister Stephen Harper “blush.”
Greenpeace supports fast tracking climate solutions, but in its current form this bill will only accelerate conflicts (see our assessment here). We’re supporting proposed amendments to the bill and some measures to increase transparency and accountability were adopted, but the bill is still deeply flawed so we need to keep the pressure on. We are asking the Senate (the house of ‘sober second thought’ within our Parliamentary system) to send this rushed bill back to the House of Commons for proper consideration.
We need to keep telling PM Mark Carney: moving fast in the wrong direction doesn’t take us anywhere we want to be!
We need to get this right.
