Orders of the Day

Hon. M. Farnworth: In this chamber, I call continued second reading debate on Bill 10. In Section A, Douglas Fir Room, I call continued debate on the estimates of Citizens’ Services. If they finish, it will be followed by the estimates for FLNRO, the Ministry of Forests, Lands, Natural Resource Operations and Rural Development.

Second Reading of Bills

BILL 10 — INCOME TAX
AMENDMENT ACT, 2019

(continued)

A. Weaver: It gives me great pleasure to take my place in the second reading debates of Bill 10, Income Tax Amendment Act, 2019. This is a bill that takes the LNG regime that the B.C. NDP have put forward and agreed to with LNG Canada, and in doing so, does a couple of things in this bill.

The first thing it does is it repeals the LNG Income Tax Act brought forward by the B.C. Liberal government in the last session. The second thing it does is repeal — these are towards the end of the bill, in section 4 — the Liquefied Natural Gas Project Agreements Act. That’s an act that enabled the Petronas project development agreement.

The third thing it does is it says: “Okay, well, buried within the Liquefied Natural Gas Income Tax Act, which had a number of components, was a tax credit that we want to retain.” So what the B.C. NDP are doing here is taking the LNG tax regime of the B.C. Liberals, repealing the income — a component of that — that would allow us to generate revenue but keeping in place the giveaway, the tax credit, that would enable, again, this what I call sellout to continue at staggering levels.

For many years, I’ve been speaking out against the fiscal folly of the B.C. Liberals at the time, trying to chase the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. That’s the LNG pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Early on in the mandate of the previous government, the B.C. NDP were a little cagey about what their views were with respect to liquefied natural gas.

There were a number of backbench MLAs who purported to be quite concerned about the issue of climate change, quite concerned about some of the unregulated activity that was ongoing with respect to the widespread adoption of horizontal fracking technology in the northeast of our province and the kind of unregulated free-for-all — Wild West, almost — that was going on in northern B.C.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

We’re starting to see some of the consequences of that now. We’re talking about what we’re going to do to preserve our caribou stocks, as the natural habitat on which they’ve relied has degraded to such a level that we’re now worried about extirpation of various herds. Again, the B.C. NDP, historically, have been quite concerned about that.

[1:35 p.m.]

Onwards we move to today. All along, consistent since 2013, and in fact in 2012, the PowerPoint presentations I was giving at the time — that’s seven years ago — are unchanged today. The essence of that is unchanged today.

Here’s the narrative that was being done in 2012 in the lead-up to the 2013 election. The B.C. Liberals, at the time, knew they had no hope of winning an election. In fact, the front page of the Vancouver Province had a picture of the now Minister of Health and said: “This man could kick a dog, and he would still be Premier.”

Well, when faced with such insurmountable challenges to victory, the B.C. Liberals had to come up with a new shtick, a new plan, something to offer British Columbians hope with. That was hope and prosperity from LNG: a $100 billion prosperity fund, 100,000 jobs, $1 trillion increase to our GDP, thriving schools, thriving hospitals, debt-free B.C. and on and on and on. So went the rhetoric of the B.C. Liberal government.

I sat opposite for four years as I watched the members now in government hurl abuse at the B.C. Liberals, hurl abuse. Not just a little bit of criticism here, a little bit of criticism there, but substantive vitriol was being hurled across the aisle to the members of the government at the time, claiming that there was a generational sellout, claiming that they were not looking out for the best interests of British Columbia, claiming that they were signing sweet deals with their corporate friends.

I have a litany of quotes that I will be reading in during the course of the debates here. Actually, I had to ask my staff to pare them down because I’ve got 20 pages of quotes that I look forward to bringing in of various NDP MLAs now, the words that they said, directed to the B.C. Liberals about the LNG Income Tax Act.

Dialing back to the history of the LNG Income Tax Act, in the first reading of that act, the B.C. NDP did support the original introduction of the LNG Income Tax Act.

Now, the rationale for that act was as follows. The B.C. Liberals recognized that it was an incredibly competitive international marketplace for natural gas. They realized that our royalty regime, while quite rich, needed to be sweetened, so they did in 2014.

This is what they did. They took what is known as the deep-well royalty credit, a credit which was designed a decade earlier to incentivize risky business, to incentivize the deep drilling, the deep vertical hydraulic fracking to access deep reservoirs of natural gas, and they extended that credit to shallow drills if you have a certain length — essentially, all natural gas drilling. All of it is, essentially, now getting the credit. And that’s fine. That was a strategy that they took, that we want to ensure that, up front, business has access to a resource that’s incredibly competitive in terms of royalty regime — frankly, I would argue, almost a giveaway.

Nevertheless, they felt that what they would do instead is try to get the companies here and then earn some revenue down the road when those same companies started producing or shipping LNG. That was the rationale behind the LNG Income Tax Act. Give away…. Well, not give away, but take little up front, let the companies get going and then have an income tax starting to generate revenue for the province. Whether you agree with it or not — clearly, I didn’t at the time — that was the logic behind the B.C. Liberals’ approach.

Now, the B.C. NDP voted in favour of that when it was first brought in. I stood alone — the only MLA, I have that framed on my wall — and voted against the second reading. At the time, the reason why I did that was I argued it was a generational sellout. I pointed out the indemnity loophole that was in and a number of other loopholes that were in.

In the spring, the B.C. Liberals brought in an amendment to the original LNG Income Tax Act. That amended, corrected, some of those loopholes, tightened some of the legislation, made the regime a little sharper. At that time, when the B.C. NDP clearly realized that they were on the wrong side of a public opinion, it was at this time that the vitriol started to ramp up.

[1:40 p.m.]

Ironically, when the LNG Income Tax Act was put to a vote, I voted in favour of it. All the NDP voted against it. Now, think about the logic of this. Think about the logic of this. The original bill was brought forward. It had so many loopholes, you could have driven a bus through it. The B.C. NDP support it. I stand against it.

The amendment act comes in. The bill is now a matter of law. The bill is a matter of law, and the amendment act was designed to make a bad piece of legislation better. The principled thing to do, if you’re actually trying to improve public policy, was to recognize that, in fact, the amendments, while I don’t agree with the original legislation, made that legislation tighter, closed some loopholes. So I stood in support of that amendment.

The NDP, in a frankly principlist approach, trying to just essentially cater to popular opinion, voted against the amendment act, in essence saying to this that a bad bill that we supported should stay bad on the books rather than trying to make it slightly better. It didn’t make any sense to me at the time, but then again, much of the discourse and much of the debate about LNG in British Columbia has not made sense to me going forward.

Now we want to take this one step further and actually repeal the whole shebang. I’ll come back to the whole framework that’s being set up in a few minutes. But I’d like to start, because it’s at the beginning of my speech, with what I believe is an incredibly important letter that I received from a civil servant in the province of British Columbia, a civil servant who worked in this government’s oil and gas provincial registry, who has resigned. He has resigned because of what’s going on in B.C. with respect to the LNG royalty regime.

Let me read this letter. This letter was mailed to the Premier, accessible by FOI, and it says the following.

“I am resigning today as a public servant and would like to draw attention to certain issues in our province’s gas royalties program and administration. With four years experience as a royalty analyst for the province, five years of field experience in upstream oil and gas operations and undergraduate economics training, I offer my somewhat informed perspective below with the hope of catalyzing increased transparency and perhaps improvement to B.C. gas royalty policy.”

Bold heading: “Conflict of interest in policy control.”

“The Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, EMPR, jointly govern and administer natural gas royalty policy. However, policy is largely controlled by EMPR, with Finance tasked with administering the corresponding royalty calculations based on monthly production data.

“Gas production and technology has changed rapidly, along with the economics of this industry, over the past 15 years, during which time our gas royalty policy has remained largely unchanged, with the said extension of the deep-well credit to shallow wells being added.

“In my opinion, much of our royalty policy is not functioning as originally intended, leading to unwarranted ballooning of industry subsidy amounts. This expensive subsidy growth is hidden by complexity and less-than-transparent public-facing information. EMPR has become responsible to promote the B.C. natural gas and LNG industry internationally, as well as creating a policy that encourages gas sector growth and profitability.”

Stop right there. I’ll come back to the letter. “The EMPR has become responsible to promote the B.C. natural gas and LNG industry internationally.” Hang on. Right there is the first flag. EMPR is the regulator, not the promoter. The regulator. When the regulator becomes the promoter, we have what’s called capture, and we have perceived, real or not, conflict of interest. We need to ensure that the public’s interests are always front and centre, and this can never be trusted when we have the regulator captured by also being the promoter.

These are aren’t my words. These are the words coming from this ministry analyst, who has since resigned.

I continue: “The ministry closely collaborates with gas producers on a variety of initiatives.” Hang on again there. “The ministry” — that is, the regulator — “collaborates with gas producers on a variety of initiatives.”

[1:45 p.m.]

“However, there is a natural conflict of interest between promoting gas producers profitability and ensuring the B.C. public receives a fair royalty for the private extraction of our shared natural resource. A segregation of duty should exist between policy makers and industry promoters but, from my perspective and experience, clearly does not. Consequently, there is no unbiased champion for the B.C. taxpayer’s rights at the policy table, and the costly consequences of this absence are hidden behind complexity.”

I’ll continue with this letter. It’s quite long. This is precisely the issue that I’ve been trying to peel and unwrap and unravel in budget estimates with the Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources, who, to be honest, I’m pretty sure doesn’t actually understand the file. When I was asking about the variety of royalty measures that were in place, the answers I got in the estimates in the fall were, frankly, shocking. I would have expected better from a minister charged with regulating an industry — not championing an industry but regulating an industry — but sadly, that was lacking.

I continue with the letter. “Billions of direct subsidization disguised as drilling incentives” is the next headline. The deep-well credit program, which I’ve raised many, many times in this Legislature — I don’t know how many times — was originally designed around now outdated assumptions of drilling technology.

That means that back in the day, we used to frack in B.C., for 50, 60 years. It was vertical fracking. The onset, in the early 2000s, of horizontal drilling allowed for much more intrusive as well as much more efficient fracking. No longer are you just drilling vertically, but you can go for great distances horizontally with the same process of injecting a mixture of water and chemicals and some sand at high pressure underground to fracture the shale and allow the gas to flow. Revolutionary technology created the boom of shale gas and oil around the world. The original deep-well credit was designed to incentivize those deep vertical wells.

Coming back to this: “The deep-well credit program, originally designed around now outdated assumptions of drilling technology, represents an ongoing, eye-watering transfer of the provincial tax burden from natural gas producers to the B.C. taxpayer.” This person continues: “This program, originally devised in 2003, has directly reduced gas producers’ existing and future royalty liability to the Crown by nearly $6 billion Canadian today.” So $6 billion has been taken off the table because of this credit going back to 2003.

I hear some mumbling from the members opposite, and I’ll tell you, I’d much rather listen to a civil servant who has resigned over this than some former member of the B.C. Liberals who happened to be in charge of this file. I’m going to go with the civil servant on this, because, to me, I’ve been very impressed with our civil service in this province of British Columbia and the diligence with which they approach their job and the ethical approach that they take in doing their daily work. This person showed great courage in bringing this forward.

“The subsidy continues to grow. In each of the last fiscal years, the Crown has issued more offsetting deep credits than it collected in actual total oil and gas royalty revenue.” That, I have checked myself, is true. We’ve given away more future deep credits than we’ve actually earned in royalties. When I asked the Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources in the fall what the accrued liability was, it was something like $3.2 billion of unclaimed deep-well credits that can be applied to future royalties that were on the books.

Some have wondered why Petronas bailed and then joined LNG Canada. Well, we know why Petronas bailed and then rejoined. Petronas is the proud owner of many, many of those billions of dollars. I don’t know the exact number, but a significant number of that credit is associated with Pacific NorthWest gas, which is an upstream supplier that was going to work with Petronas. They now feel a bit landlocked, but they could bring those credits into an LNG partner as, I believe, the fifth partner.

On we go. It says here:

“The Crown has issued more revenue-offsetting deep credits than it has collected in actual total oil and gas royalty revenue. Royalty agreements exist to compensate owners of mineral rights for the removal of their mineral resources.

[1:50 p.m.]

“The deep-well program continues to ensure that B.C. citizens, as collective owners of B.C. natural gas, receive a net negative return for the depletion of our gas resources. We issue more royalty/tax offsets annually than the revenue we receive. Put simply, the Crown is giving out $2 in available royalty tax rebates for every dollar in royalty tax payables.”

Now, I’ve been raising this in this Legislature for what must be two to three years now, and it seems to be hitting deaf ears. Frankly, the legislative press gallery has been caught up in the hoopla of the LNG promises and has really not been exploring the scale and level of this giveaway either.

It gets even worse here. I’ll just digress from this letter for a second. Let’s go back to what the B.C. Liberals have done in terms of trying to entice LNG here. They said: “Well, okay. We’re going to bring the cleanest LNG in the world.” I know, rhetoric. I remember, and I’ll read quotes later, how member after member from the B.C. NDP ridiculed the Premier at the time — simply ridiculed her and the Minister of Natural Gas at the time — about cleanest LNG. The same language is coming up now about clean LNG.

However, the B.C. Liberals said: “Okay, LNG Canada. We’re going to give you cheap electricity. We know we can’t deliver into it unless we build Site C. But we’ll give you cheap electricity to deliver on this ‘cleanest in the world’ promise if you use electricity to compress the natural gas. You’ll be a big user. You’ll still need lots of other electricity in your upstream and downstream activities, but the compression will take a lot of energy. We will give you the industrial rates, something like 5.4 cents a kilo an hour, if you use electricity to compress.”

Now, that was the rationale of the B.C. Liberals. B.C. NDP economics, for what it’s worth — I don’t know whether it’s an oxymoron or not….

Interjection.

A. Weaver: Thank you. The member from Chilliwack pointed that out, and I think we were thinking alike at this time.

It’s as follows: “Oh, that’s not good enough. We’ll let you still get the industrial rate if you compress natural gas, but we’re going to give you the resource up front.”

Go figure that. In the B.C. Liberal world, you actually pay very little royalties up front. However, we’re going to force you to be clean and green down the road, if you’re going to get the industrial rate. B.C. NDP says: “You don’t have to pay the royalties up front for the natural gas. You’re going to ship it to yourself and use it.”

Essentially, we’re giving LNG Canada free LNG compression. What sort of economic argument is used to justify that, other than outrageous NDP economics? It simply doesn’t make sense to look at a company and say: “You can have the gas for free to actually compress it.” And a ton of gas will be used in the process. That’s a problem yet again in terms of the race-for-the-bottom economics that goes on here.

Let’s continue with this letter.

“The deep credit program does not achieve any measurable behavioural impact on industry or benefit society other than increasing the profitability of gas production at the expense of the public.

“When the program began, only a small fraction of new wells would qualify for credits. A single deep well produces more gas than many shallower wells. Therefore, fewer total wells needed to be drilled, with less surface equipment and roadbuilding reducing costs and environmental harm.

“However, in the past four years, 99 percent of all new wells qualify for the program. An industry would drill these types of wells regardless of our policy, due to the inherent cost savings and productivity gains that arise from horizontal fracking versus vertical fracking and profitability achieved by this modern, commonplace type of well construction.

“Royalty tax reduction programs should be employed to change behaviour and solve specific problems, rather than a complex and misleadingly labeled subsidy”

That is what it is — a subsidy, yet another subsidy to a sunset industry. We’ll come back to that.

“The cost of drilling and completing a deep gas well in B.C.’s main formations has declined drastically over the past decade. Yet our royalty discounts per new deep well remain fixed.”

There are arguments to be made that supporting B.C.’s gas industry benefits our society. Fair enough. Let’s make those arguments. However, the public should be able to determine how much support is being given and whether other industries could put that financial support to better use.

[1:55 p.m.]

What might be the societal benefit of $6 billion in subsidies for B.C. infrastructure — for the tech sector, agriculture sector, R and D, innovation? Alternatively, could the province simply lower other taxes and service fees? Would we really need to be going through the headaches of the employer health tax in certain municipalities and school boards if there was $6 billion more found from not subsidizing this industry? If our gas sector requires a subsidy, it should not be hidden from public view behind complex, mislabeled policy, and that is precisely what’s going on in the province of British Columbia.

The letter continues: “Last year’s 2018 public accounts document revealed that over $2.5 billion worth of deep credits will offset future revenue. This disclosed liability figure will continue to rapidly grow this year and into the future and does not include those credits that have been granted and already used by royalty payers.”

The next section of this letter, quite a scathing indictment of what’s going on in the oil and gas ministry here in the province of British Columbia, is entitled “Gas producer cost of service allowances grossly inflated.”

“Producer cost of service allowances,” another additional royalty reduction program, “are calculated based on an approximation of the ‘Crown share.’ The policy compensates producers for certain field-gathering costs associated with the ‘share’ of their production value collected as a Crown royalty payment.

“In theory, what this means,” according to the letter, “is this should mean that if the province assesses a 10 percent royalty of the value of a producer’s gas production, we could compensate for 10 percent of the associated costs — i.e., the cost of service.

“In reality,” the letter goes on, “the Crown’s share is approximated by a factor called the weighted average royalty rate, or WARR. The WARR is consistently inflated two to three times higher than the amount we actually collect from producers because this factor is a measure of ‘gross’ royalties before deductions, which are far higher than actual royalties payable.

“The average effective royalty rate payable is about 5 percent in the province of B.C., whereas the average WARR” — that’s the weighted average royalty rate used in the PCOS allowance calculation — “is several times that on average over the last few years. The Crown pays for 10 percent of the costs and receives 5 percent of the benefit.”

Think about that. The Crown is paying 10 percent of the costs and receiving 5 percent of the benefit. This is both unfair for the B.C. taxpayer, and frankly, it’s not, as he says here, what we’re telling the public.

You can go directly to the ministry website and go and look at the producer-cost-of-service natural gas allowance information, on the B.C. Ministry of Energy and Mines website, and you can read the information there, and you’ll see that this writer is exactly right. The Crown pays for 10 percent of the costs and receives 5 percent of the benefit. It’s not what we tell the public on the producer-cost-of-service natural gas allowance information page.

“For instance,” the letter continues, “evidence suggests that gas producers’ costs were offset by $3,248,871.27.” That’s $3,248,871.27 too much for their production costs incurred during a single month of 2018. There have been some calculations, which I can make available — I’ll do so in my blog later — that actually show some supporting evidence for this.

“The total producer-cost-of-service allowances offset Crown revenue annually by over $100 million.” He says here, “in my opinion” — that’s the letter writer’s opinion — “the unfair and illogical way the allowance is granted to producers overcompensates them by many tens of millions of dollars per year at the expense of the B.C. public.

“The problem is very difficult, if not impossible, to understand by reading public-facing information alone. The policy rewards high-cost operators while disincentivizes industry behaviours that might lower costs or increase efficiency.”

[2:00 p.m.]

The letter continues, another area. “Significant policy compliance burden” is the subsection of this part of the letter.

“B.C. gas royalty policy is exceedingly complex, and the province has made strong efforts to monitor the industry. However, the royalty regime could be greatly simplified by the use of fixed, fair, monthly reference prices for all the product types and assigning fixed, fair costs that would apply to all producers.”

The province of Alberta already does this and comfortably relies far more heavily on royalty revenues as a proportion of their budget. In contrast, B.C. producers are forced to compile, calculate and submit thousands of valuation and cost details each month for what are already closely monitored commodity transactions.

Coming back to the letter, the writer says this:

“In my opinion, a much closer look should be taken at any cross-jurisdictional, royalty-competitive comparisons, as B.C.’s current natural gas royalties includes revenue from gas, liquids and field condensate, which is dissimilar from other provinces, such as Alberta. A comprehensive policy review and simplification could significantly benefit industry, government, staff and the B.C. taxpayer.”

Coming back to this civil servant, this civil servant has resigned. This civil servant has resigned now and has taken it upon himself to provide information to the Premier and others as to the rationale for why he or she was feeling somewhat uncomfortable in that position.

Let’s continue forward with the scale of the giveaway here. I alluded to the fact the B.C. NDP agreed to give LNG Canada the industrial rate of electricity, even if they don’t use electricity in the compression of the natural gas at an LNG facility. I also suggested that the B.C. Liberals gave them the caveat that we give it to you if you use natural gas in the compression. What I didn’t elude to in more detail was that we couldn’t deliver into that contract unless we did one of three things.

We could’ve evoked the Columbia River entitlement and got about the equivalent of Site C power to come in. That produces — I forget the exact amount — a couple of hundred million dollars directly into provincial revenues. Nobody is really wanting to mess with that, it seems, but we could have gone that way.

We could have gone for a very aggressive standing offer program for independent power producers to put out a call for power. These might have gone in partnership with Indigenous communities from north to south and east to west to produce a multitude of small, more intermittent types of power. The load could have been levelled either through coupling them with local storage systems, which are now becoming ubiquitous, or even using our existing dams to actually stabilize load.

B.C. Liberals decided that what we’re going to do is continue with Site C. Back in 2010 or 2009, when stage 3 of the environmental assessment began, there was a lot of uncertainty as to what the total costs would be. However, at the time, it was a relatively inexpensive way of producing power, compared to things like solar and wind. Now, of course, that price curve has completely changed.

Now we have the B.C. NDP, who campaigned on stopping Site C. Whether it be the member for Saanich South, who stands up in front of a large audience in Victoria and stands before that audience and urges people to vote for the B.C. NDP — not the Greens, of course, but the B.C. NDP. Only the B.C. NDP can form government, and they will stop Site C. “And guess what. We’re going to send it to BCUC, but that’s really just an inconvenience. There’s no way it’ll pass.”

That’s what the B.C. NDP campaigned on. We, in our confidence and supply, thought, “Okay, you need the political cover to do the decision that needs to be done.” We knew what the BCUC was going to put forward in terms of a cost analysis. It’s going to come in at ten to 15 cents a kilowatt hour to produce that electricity.

We know, right now, that we can produce intermittent power or small-scale hydro, solar, and others, at a fraction, a half to a third, of that cost. We know we could do that right now, today, with standing offer programs if they were put forward. But no, the NDP wanted to build Site C — remarkably, with SNC-Lavalin as one of the big proponents. But that’s neither here nor there. However, they wanted to build Site C.

They argued, “Oh, we can’t cancel Site C, despite the fact that the BCUC gave us all the information that we needed to make that decision” — the political cover that they so desperately wanted. They now could not bring $5 billion on to the provincial books because it might hurt the credit rating.

That didn’t stop them bringing Golden Ears and Port Mann debt onto books — didn’t stop them for even a microsecond bringing them onto the books. Now what has happened….

[2:05 p.m.]

Sure, it may have won them a couple of seats in and around the Port Mann Bridge. But what they have done, through bad policy measures of removing that toll, is ensure that no future infrastructure projects will be able to have a tolling component, the user-pay component which is so critical for the development of modern infrastructure in today’s world — user-pay. But by removing those tolls, we no longer will have an appetite to move forward with user-pay. Are the B.C. NDP going to have an urban congestion tax in Vancouver? That’s another option — congestion taxes. I’ll believe that when I see it.

The B.C. NDP continued down this path, building Site C. There are an awful lot of their former supporters who are quite upset about this. Their Premier, our Premier, the member for Saanich South, the member for Powell River–Sunshine Coast and others were very proud to stick a yellow stake on the side of the Peace, standing up for the Peace, saying they would do what they could to save the Peace Valley from being flooded.

They were going to do what they could for the Indigenous communities in and around the Peace who were concerned about their territory being flooded forever. They were going to do what they could to preserve the heritage site that was on the fort down at the water level. They were going to do what they could to preserve the habitat for the ungulates, some of which winter-over on some of the islands there. Only would they do it if they became government. But they did, and they ignored what they promised people.

They ignored what they promised people, in my view, because for this present government, what was more important than actually looking out for future generations, ensuring British Columbians got value for our natural resources, was that this government felt that it wanted to deliver what Christy Clark couldn’t. That’s the base level of politics and natural gas in B.C. “We’re going to try to deliver what Christy Clark couldn’t.” The only way to do that is to take the giveaway — the giveaway that I’m so looking forward to articulating through quotes — to a whole new level, a whole new level like we’ve never seen in Canada in terms of corporate welfare.

I’ve already articulated the $6 billion that the upstream oil and gas sector have got in royalty credits. That’s not counting a myriad of others. That’s not counting the below-market power that the ratepayer of British Columbia — you, hon. Speaker, me, other members here — are going to have to pay.

When I’m paying ten cents a kilowatt hour for my tier 1 electricity and I know it’s going to cost 15 cents a kilowatt hour to produce electricity from Site C and I know that I’m a ratepayer who is subject to BCUC prices or whims of the government and I know that industry’s not going to have to pay that because they’ve been locked into a multigenerational rate of 5.4 cents a kilowatt hour, I’m going to be paying for that. That’s saying to me that, at minimum, my hydro rate has got to increase by 50 percent in the next few years, and more like it’s going to push to a 100 percent increase within the next decade.

That falls squarely on this government. We have stood here as an opposition party doing our best to point out these issues that government has to address.

Now, at any given time, we could act like children and throw up our hands, walk out, pick up our bat and ball and say: “Oh, we’re going to an election.” Is that really the best way forward? Or is the best way forward to stand up and hold this government to account for what it’s doing here today, hold this government to account for, on the one hand, saying to the province of British Columbia…?

Interjection.

A. Weaver: Well, the B.C. Liberals opposite. You’re entitled to vote against this bill. And if you vote against this bill, because it is a generational sellout, we know you didn’t do this. You did not have the gall to do such a giveaway. Let’s see if you have the courage, the moral fortitude, to vote against this bill. Because it won’t pass if you have the moral fortitude to stand up for British Columbians. This is on you; this is not on us.

We are standing up here and saying enough is enough. This generational sellout is not on. This is not a free market. This is a so wedged-out market that has so got corporate welfare on it like steroids, that if this is what you want to support, the so-called free market party…. Is the free market party going to talk about the mother of all non–free market bills? Let’s see, because the ball is certainly in their court.

[2:10 p.m.]

We’re at a juncture here in B.C. We have two paths. We have the CleanBC path, which is the path that we were so very proud to work on. It’s not a path for greenhouse gas reductions. What CleanBC is, is an economic vision for prosperity in British Columbia that’s grounded in our strategic advantages, that recognizes that we will never compete against jurisdictions like the Philippines, Indonesia or Malaysia in terms of straight digging dirt out of the ground.

It’s because we in British Columbia care about our social systems. We care about our environment. We have, typically, regulations in place, although not so much in the oil and gas sector, and we believe that it’s critical for businesses doing business here to internalize the social and environmental externalities that other jurisdictions don’t. Sure, we can compete on the international resource extraction front, but we don’t do so with race-for-the-bottom economics. You’re watching that here with Bill 10, the Income Tax Amendment Act, right now as we speak.

You do it through being smarter, by focusing on efficiency, by focusing on value-added and by bringing the tech sector together with the resource sector to ensure that when we are accessing our resources, we’re doing so in means that are cleaner, are more efficient, allowing us to value-add and exploit the technology and knowledge at the same time as those resources. Yes, this can happen in British Columbia, because it is happening in British Columbia.

What’s missing is leadership — leadership by government and, prior to that, leadership by the official opposition. The market needs signals to be sent. Now, I take my hat off to the member for Surrey-Whalley, not Surrey South — I take my hat off to Surrey South as well — who is a proud champion of the tech sector in British Columbia.

However, being a proud champion is one thing, and then all of the good work that you’ve done is undermined by this signal, because you can’t signal to the market in two different directions. You signal to the market that B.C. is the place for new innovation, for the economy of tomorrow. We want leaders of tomorrow. We know we can attract and retain the best and brightest in the world to B.C. because of the quality of the life we can offer, a stable — quasi-stable — democracy. We’ve got the most beautiful place in the world to live. We’ve got bountiful energy, wood, water that we have access to. The quality of life we can give people in British Columbia is second to none.

Highly mobile industries like the tech sector, like the biomedical sector, like value-added, like manufacturing…. These highly mobile sectors can come to B.C. and know and rest assured that they’ll be able to attract and retain the types of workers they need because of the quality of life we can offer them. On top of that, our education system is second to none in the world. So we know we can offer employers first-rate trained and skilled workers to actually consider hiring them for their new-economy jobs.

No, take that back. It’s time we stopped talking about jobs here in British Columbia and time we started talking about careers. It’s easy to create jobs. Build a bridge, and you’ve got a bunch of jobs. What we want in B.C. are careers. We want people to be able to go into a profession and know that their investment in education is going to pay off because there’s a future for them in their chosen career. Not job — career. And it’s about time in British Columbia that we stopped focusing on jobs and more on careers. Careers are what will lead to sustainable employment and income security. Jobs are what pay the bills at the end of the week, but it is a career that you need to ensure sustainable income security.

We’ve been clear. The B.C. Greens will not support an expansion of taxpayer-funded giveaways to help a large, multinational fossil fuel industry set up in B.C. The corporate welfare…. These are not even B.C. shareholders, by and large. This is LNG Canada. Many of the shareholders, the five big ones, are based in Asia.

The resource is ours, but we’re giving it away. We want to repeal the LNG Income Tax Act because we don’t want to earn anything there. We think that there’s going to be wealth and prosperity through the false promises that we’ve heard for four years from the Liberals and now two years from the NDP, and we claim that the B.C. NDP have now approved this because their four conditions have been met. To remind you what these four conditions are: fair return, jobs training, respect and diversity for Indigenous values and rights, and to meet the climate commitments.

[2:15 p.m.]

Now, what I find so incredibly…. What’s the word I’m looking for? Frustrating is one word. It’s probably not the correct word. Mind-boggling is another good word. Much like Christy Clark’s five conditions for agreeing with the Trans Mountain pipeline going forward, the B.C. NDP provided zero metrics, not a single metric, as to what would determine whether a fair return is there or not. Because they said so? Well, they criticized Christy Clark for having five conditions — for which she never articulated what the metrics were that those conditions were judged against — yet we have the same here with the B.C. NDP.

Fair return. Well, in light of the fact that we’re getting no return, as far as I can tell, for decades, I’m not so sure what metrics they’ve used for fair return. I guess it’s above zero, because it wouldn’t happen unless they did this generational sellout.

Jobs training. Well, you know, I’ve already gone to the International Union of Operating Engineers and filed complaints. I’ve filed complaints because I actually know people who are working on the Boskalis dredging ships in Kitimat. Let me tell you how this so-called hiring local works.

There’s a Newfoundland company that’s contracted out to provide workers for Boskalis, which is dredging in Kitimat. The Newfoundland company gets people from wherever. How many of them are from B.C.? Well, I know a couple, but they were summarily fired when they dared to raise questions about safety standards on the Boskalis dredge: “We don’t want those pesky British Columbians raising questions about hydraulic fluid spilling over the decks, because that could lead to issues.” So nothing has changed. Boskalis is a Netherlands company, dredging with temporary foreign workers, much against the so-called promises of the B.C. NDP, saying that we’re going to have jobs and prosperity for locals.

Respect and partnerships. I understand that the member for Skeena is quite pleased with the development of LNG Canada. I take my hat off to him for standing up for his community, but I would suggest that we’re far from respect and reconciliation along the entire route — particularly when you ask the question of Indigenous people, not only immediately affected but in Haida Gwaii. Ask the Indigenous people of Haida Gwaii what they think of this. They’re opposed. The Unist’ot’en Camp, the Wet’suwet’en. They have some issues.

To suggest that this is all clear sailing is by no means giving the complete picture. It’s actually worse than that, because the government has a duty and a responsibility, as an agent of the Crown, to negotiate and work with Indigenous communities in our province, yet this government abdicated its responsibility and left it up to LNG Canada to go deal with the so-called pesky Wet’suwet’en. What did LNG Canada do? The only thing they could do, which was ask for injunctive relief, get the RCMP to clear the path, because this government abdicated its responsibility as an agent of the Crown required to negotiate.

Meet climate commitments. Well, as I get towards the latter part of my second reading speech to this, I’ll suggest that it’s somewhat premature to be celebrating that we’re meeting climate commitments with LNG Canada. There’s simply no way in a million years that you’re No. 4. The B.C. NDP’s own criteria — No. 4, “meet climate commitments” — is not met by the legislation today. For that reason and that reason alone, I will be moving, later on, a reasoned amendment in a few minutes, but not just yet.

Before I get to that, I want to come to some of the more interesting quotes that we’ve seen with this. I want to start off with a couple of my favourites. Let’s go directly to the Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources. The Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources has been quite boisterous on this file. In fact, my understanding is that there’s a funeral happening right now in Nelson, a funeral going on commemorating the credibility of the now Minister of Energy and Mines. It’s quite funny. I mean, it’s kind of weird, but they’re holding a funeral for the credibility of the Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources in Nelson.

Fair enough. Well deserved, frankly. The same minister who stood up and argued — I’ve got this on video: “Vote for us, the NDP, because we will stop Site C, and I’m for you.” It was under her watch, as the minister….

Interjection.

A. Weaver: Paddle for the Peace. I never went to Paddle for the Peace.

Interjection.

[2:20 p.m.]

A. Weaver: Yeah, I didn’t do Paddle for the Peace. As you know, I’ve been up there several times. I’m extraordinarily supportive, but in my view, we’re there as elected MLAs. We’re not elected to be activists; we’re elected to listen and to engage with people. When you become an activist, as the member from Nelson did, and you start doing things that activists do, who are calling on this, it all comes a cropper when you are now in a decision-making capability. Frankly, she has no credibility in this file.

In light of that file and in light of these comments…. These are the comments that Minister Mungall said, and I’m referring to Bill 30, the Liquefied Natural Gas Project Agreements Act, on July 14, 2015. Let me read this. It’s fairly lengthy, but it’s filled with rhetoric and hyperbole, and I think members opposite, at least, will take some solace in hearing this, and I suspect there will be one or two smiles….

Interjection.

A. Weaver: Member for Langley East, are you up after me? You know I’ll be staying. I’ll be looking forward to listening to your thoughts.

Here is what it says.

Interjection.

A. Weaver: That’s right. The member for Chilliwack tells me he doesn’t smile any more. It’s quite sad, but we’ll see if we can’t break a smile on you.

This is the Minister of Energy and Mines, July 14, 2015:

“Now, they” — they being the Liberals — “wouldn’t understand what it means to say no to selling out this province. They put themselves in such a desperate position when it comes to negotiating for LNG that they had to say yes to any single thing that walked through the door. That’s exactly what they have done. This is the big sellout of British Columbia.

“British Columbians are going to be on the hook. Should they raise taxes for LNG, we have to indemnify Petronas. We have to indemnify the nine other corporations that are involved with this deal. Taxpayers are footing the bill.

“If we want to target this industry for any future environmental changes that would improve environmental sustainability, we’re going to have to pay them for that. We have to pay that. The taxpayers have to foot that bill.”

Here we go:

“It’s just utterly ridiculous and irresponsible and reprehensible” — no hyperbole there — “to sell out British Columbians for the next 25 years, not just for this industry but potentially others as well.”

Those are words from the member from Nelson.

“No longer can we impose that based on public interest and do the public will, as we are supposed to do here. Instead, the company will be indemnified by the taxpayers for any costs incurred to meet the new standard. That’s ridiculous. That is a sellout. That is a sellout of this province. That is a sellout of this future, and that’s not okay….

“People in my part of the world” — the same part of the world that is presently giving her a funeral for her credibility — “view the environment and long-term environmental sustainable planning as one of the top priorities that any government should be considering, and that is not reflected in Bill 30. What is reflected, rather, is a desperate, desperate grasp at any deal put in front of them, because promises were made in an election….

“There’s a revenue-generation opportunity that has been sold out by this government. It’s been sold out by this government. And we’re hearing from the opposite side that some deal is better than no deal, and this is a good start, that we’re getting to yes and so on and so forth. I think what’s interesting is that Alberta never gave the same type of sweetheart deal to its oil and gas sector.

“What we hear from this government is a big yes to selling out British Columbians, selling out British Columbians’ futures, selling out our future potential at reducing our impact on global warming and selling out future revenue sources. That’s what I hear from this government, and I don’t think that’s right for British Columbians.

“We have a big sellout of B.C.so somebody can stand up for a photo op around the next election. British Columbians deserve better than what they got with this development agreement and with this bill. They should be demanding better, and they are demanding better.”

Well. Oh, for the days when we had the Petronas development agreement on the table before us, because what the B.C. NDP want to do is take that so-called sellout and put it on steroids. The industrial rate for electricity — 5.4 cents a kilowatt hour. Wanting to exempt LNG Canada from a future increase in the carbon tax because they will be “world leading.”

The only problem with that is LNG Canada wanted to use natural gas in the compression of natural gas. Well, guess what. In Louisiana, we now have electric compression, which has zero emissions from it.

Interjection.

[2:25 p.m.]

A. Weaver: The member for Peace River South is clearly up on this file and quite enjoying this.

In a briefing where I asked some questions about this, oh, how the goalposts do move.

Now we start hearing about: “Well, we’re going to start considering the entire supply chain, including where the electricity comes from, as well as other things, in terms of this, that and the other.”

Well, I’m afraid that just doesn’t cut it. Right now electricity is an integrated grid, and you pay the spot price if you wish. There’s a ton of cheap wind on the market for two cents a kilowatt hour, if that’s what you want.

It just doesn’t work that way. If this government thinks that somehow it can con British Columbians…. To suggest that, in fact, LNG Canada should be exempted from future increases in the carbon tax because it is the cleanest in the world…. It’s not. It’s nowhere close, because they are continuing to propose to use natural gas in the compression of natural gas.

As I pointed out, in the great sellout, the NDP have given LNG Canada natural gas, essentially, for free, because of the royalty structure and the preponderance of credits that exist. No wonder LNG Canada are pretty happy about this deal. They clearly were negotiating with people who have very little experience in negotiation or were utterly desperate to deliver what Christy Clark couldn’t. That was the bar, and no other bar was used. Frankly, this is very troubling — what’s being brought before us here today.

I’d like to come to another quote. The member for Saanich South, another member, door-knocking in my area, a very strong opponent of LNG. Well, let’s just see what happens when she becomes government. We know what happened with respect to fish farms. Say one thing; do another. We know what happened with respect to Site C. Say one thing; do another. What about LNG? Well, let’s have a look here.

In the budget debate on February 18, 2015, the member for Saanich South, now the Minister of Agriculture, said this: “It’s politics, not impartial analysis, that led this government to focus on LNG to the exclusion of all other sectors in this province.”

Then, on April 6, 2016, in the debate on the Greenhouse Gas Industrial Reporting and Control Amendment Act, she says this:

“As we look at the latest rendition of the B.C. Liberals’ attempt to carry on this facade and to have ‘the cleanest LNG in the world’ — I mean, at this point, it’s any LNG — Bill 19, the Greenhouse Gas Industrial Reporting and Control Amendment Act, we need to go back to Bill 2. My colleagues really laid out our strategy on Bill 2 last time, but I’m going to just talk about my views on it.

“We opposed Bill 2.” That was the LNG Income Tax Act. I think that was it. “I think we made really great arguments around why it should have been opposed. While doing that, we laid out our concerns about what this bill did and what it didn’t do. Really, what it didn’t do was it failed to address the whole picture. That’s again what we’re doing with this amendment. The whole picture is not there.

“When you talk about the cleanest LNG or an LNG industry or opportunities that we have as a province, and you fail to address all the emissions coming from the LNG processing and extracting process, then you’re not there. You’re not doing our province any favours. You certainly don’t have the right, I don’t think, to stand up and talk about how much you care about children’s future….”

Oh, my goodness. The member for Saanich South is evoking the children’s future. You remember the protests on the steps of the Legislature just last Friday? Thousands of people, millions across the world, of children, standing up and saying: “Listen to us. Hear us. Our concerns about climate change are real, and you, the adults, are ignoring them, and you’re not taking our interests in your decision-making.” Are those the children she’s referring to? I’m not sure, but I do suspect my colleague from Saanich North and the Islands will provide some further information on that.

“…I don’t think, to stand up and talk about how much you care about children’s future in this province if you’re not taking into account 70 percent of emissions coming from an industry….

“So the cleanest LNG?” she goes on to say. “We’re going to have an industry that discounts 70 percent of emissions. How do the other members sleep at night knowing that that’s what they’re running on, that that’s okay?”

[2:30 p.m.]

A very, very poignant question posed by the Minister of Agriculture back in 2016 to the members of the B.C. Liberal Party, a question that I pose to the members of the B.C. NDP today.

[J. Isaacs in the chair.]

How do you sleep at night? How do you sleep at night knowing that you are putting before us a generational sellout that actually goes against everything you campaigned on in the last election?

You campaigned on generational equity. You campaigned on dealing with climate change. You campaigned on a new economy. You campaigned on protecting water. You campaigned on Indigenous rights. You campaigned on having electricity rates that are reasonable and cheap. Yet what we see here is you just going to another side.

My challenge….

Interjection.

A. Weaver: I was asked the question: how is the confidence and supply agreement going? It’s going just fine. You see, I get an opportunity here to stand up and point out all the problems with this bill.

I’m looking to you. I’m looking to my friends in the B.C. Liberals to see whether they have the moral fortitude and the courage to stand up and vote against this. Do you have the courage to vote against this? It’s my challenge to you, because you know we are. If you want to defeat this bill, we can defeat it here today.

I’ll keep going here from the same minister because she has a lot to say, an awful lot to say. It’s remarkable. “It’s problematic for me,” she continues. “It makes me….”

Interjections.

A. Weaver: Well, I vote…. I’m getting a few comments from the peanut gallery here. It does make this time fly a little faster. I’ve already covered the decision-maker on file, so we’ll come back to that.

“It’s problematic for me,” she says. “It makes me believe that as the public and as people in this province look at this government and its decision-making process, their credibility is going down the tubes just as fast as their opportunities to develop an LNG industry.” That’s a nice quote.

The member for Langley East is going to like this one. Just before you go, I’m going to say it again. “It’s problematic for me. It makes me believe that as the public and as people in this province look at this government and its decision-making process, their credibility is going down the tubes just as fast as their opportunities to develop an LNG industry.” Talk about the pot calling the kettle black. Wow.

“This is a government,” she says, “who’s leading, not on the climate change file but, I think, on the file of being entitled to make decisions. In this case, I believe it’s because they’re so desperate to fulfil campaign promises that aren’t going to happen that they’re really throwing away our future in this province. It’s a selfish, selfish decision.” Putting it in context, what the Liberals are doing actually looks super conservative fiscally relative to the giveaway we have before us right now.

She continues: “They’re not legislating like we’re in one of the most important races of our lives, and that’s the race to slow down the effects of climate change on our planet.” I’m just going to pause there for a second. Let me read this again, and let that sink in to those millions of viewers at home. This is what the member for Saanich South, the Minister of Agriculture, had the gall to say, hurling abuse at the B.C. Liberals when she was in opposition in 2016: “They’re not legislating like we’re in one of the most important races of our lives, and that’s the race to slow down the effects of climate change on our planet. This is not a joke.”

You could have fooled me that this is not a joke when I see this piece of legislation before me, which takes the legislation that the B.C. Liberals brought forward and puts it on steroids. I’ve only covered a few of the exemptions. I talked about the carbon tax. I talked about Site C. I talked about the elimination of the LNG Income Tax Act.

Then we talked about the steel tariffs because, of course, LNG Canada doesn’t want to build this plant in B.C. That is not going to happen, despite the rhetoric we hear. They want to build it in Asia. In order to do that, to build it in Asia, they want to build it with Asian steel. If they did that, they’d import everything built in Asia with Asian steel, and they’d be hit with an import duty. But good old Trudeau stood up for Canada and waived that duty as well. So we have another giveaway there. That’s on top of what the B.C. Liberals…. There’s still more, and I’ll come to those more giveaways as we keep going.

Let’s continue down with these very illuminating comments by the member for Saanich South. “Other areas of the world are acknowledging that,” she says. “At the same time that they’re acknowledging that, we’re passing legislation that basically greenwashes climate change legislation with” — again, this needs to be said slowly — “reckless, empty rhetoric that doesn’t mean anything. And it’s very, very dangerous.”

[2:35 p.m.]

Hear, hear, I say, to the member for Saanich South. Where are you now in this chamber? What are you going to vote for? Do you have the courage, do you have the moral fortitude, to stand up for what you believe in and you said so back in 2016? I’d like to be pleasantly surprised. Sadly, knowing the way this place this place works, I suspect you’ll be whipped to vote the way you’ve been told to vote, as opposed to the way you should.

Interjection.

A. Weaver: I bet you you’re right. I bet you we’re going to see one or two people speak on second reading, and that’ll be it. They want this bill to pass fast. The beauty of our parliamentary procedure is we have ample opportunity to debate this moving forward. I look forward to continuing this debate.

Let’s continue with her comments. This is what she says: “We have a government that, on one hand, talks about a climate change action plan and being a climate leader but, on the other hand, brings in legislation to govern an industry that would, in Liberal reality, operate outside of a climate action plan. How does the government square that? It’s very concerning.”

Good question. Good question, minister from Saanich South. Lead me read you your own question that you posed then. “We have a government that, on one hand, talks about a climate change action plan and being a climate leader but, on the other hand, brings in legislation to govern an industry that would, in Liberal reality, operate outside of a climate action plan.”

Remarkable. Truly remarkable, because that is precisely what this government wants to do. It wants to have a climate plan and then exempt LNG Canada from being part of that climate plan if they’re the cleanest in the world. But they don’t really have to be, because others are using electric compression. We’re going to be cleanest by NDP definition, which means that you are cleanest by definition, because you are who you are.

This is what we’re dealing with here — shameful. How these members sleep at night, I actually don’t know. I don’t know how they can. Principled people would not be able to stand by and vote for this legislation, knowing that it betrays future generations by bringing into play in Canada the single biggest point source of greenhouse gas emissions this country has ever seen in one fell swoop. That is what this legislation is doing, and that is shameful, using the words of the member for Saanich South. What is this government doing? She says: “And it’s very, very dangerous.”

The member continues. “The fact is that there are no commitments made to control or reduce greenhouse gas emissions, 70 percent of emissions.” The same is said for LNG Canada. There is nothing on the books as of today that says in CleanBC how LNG Canada is going to reduce emissions — zero. We have not got the methane regulations in place as of today. We’re waiting for the feds. So what was said back in 2016 is a variant of today. Nothing has changed.

The member goes on. “Of course, they’re in a bit of a bind right now, these members. They’re creating reckless legislation, which, in my mind, as someone who has always been an environmentalist” — that’s a joke — “is absolutely reckless, irresponsible and disappointing.” Being an environmentalist until you don’t want to be considered one anymore, because now you have to make a decision — that’s a tough one. So your principles are out the window.

“They’re creating reckless legislation,” she says, “which, in my mind, as someone who has always been an environmentalist, is absolutely reckless, irresponsible and disappointing. They’re creating this reckless legislation. They’re sweetening the deal as much as they possibly can, treating LNG like a loss-leader in a department store.”

I just have to read those quotes one more time. “They’re creating this reckless legislation. They’re sweetening the deal as much as they possibly can, treating LNG like a loss-leader in a department store.” That from the fiscally conservative B.C. Liberals. That Pandora’s box of irresponsible activity was unleashed when the NDP took over this file. What the B.C. Liberals were proposing to do, while I stood against it — and I agree with the member back then — pales in comparison to what the B.C. NDP are doing. It pales in comparison.

It’s one of three things. I just don’t understand. It’s either that we’re blinded by what we’re doing — we just want to deliver what Christy Clark couldn’t, because that’s just cool — or they don’t understand it or they’re just opportunistic. I don’t know which of those it is, but it’s got to be one, because you can’t have it both ways.

Interjection.

A. Weaver: Point taken, from the member for Peace River South. It could be some combination of all three. I didn’t appreciate that, and now I do.

Let’s keep going. Same minister. She provided so many juicy quotes. “One of the things that I find so despicable, the most despicable almost, with this bill….” She’s referring back to the Greenhouse Gas Industrial Reporting and Control Act.

Interjection.

[2:40 p.m.]

A. Weaver: I digress a little bit. The member for Peace River North is getting a little upset at me because I’m using all his quotes up, and he had some quotes that he wanted to read into the record. I’ve got 20 pages.

Interjection.

A. Weaver: We have lots of them. We jest about these quotes, but it is really serious. This is important, because this is a government now that literally hurled abuse. I sat here for four years…. Hurling abuse, rhetoric, catcalling, name-calling, all sorts of things, for four years — and now what they propose to do is take what the B.C. Liberals did to a whole new level. It’s remarkable.

Coming back to the member for Saanich South:

“One of the things that I find so despicable, the most despicable, almost, with this bill is something that Marc Lee from the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives states so clearly” — and it's this — “A small step for GHG emissions and a giant leap for greenwashing. Greenwashing is such a good term for this….

“Now we see legislation coming forward to allow government to greenwash the LNG industry. How does that make sense? It doesn't. It doesn't make sense. Obviously, I'm going to be voting against this bill” — and I certainly hope she carries this forward now — “as well as my colleagues. I would assume the independents are also doing the same.”

Those independents did indeed vote — for those bills — against it, and we will do so again now, except we’re now no longer independents.

Here comes down another case. I remind you again of the funeral for the credibility of the member from Nelson that’s ongoing. But here she says it again, the member for Saanich South:

“I think it comes down to credibility. There’s a problem with credibility. I want to be proud of this province. I want to be proud of the government. Whether it is us in government or someone else in government, it still doesn’t mean I don’t want to be proud of the decisions and the directions that governments are taking here in this province.

“We do have amazing opportunities here, but why would we squander them just to get an election promise through at all costs? It doesn’t make sense. I’m disappointed. Why don’t you take this time to pull this bill right off the table, to come back with an amendment that actually speaks to climate change and emission targets? Then you could see us support something like that. But until you do, we will not be supporting this bill.”

Words that I’m not going to argue with. Words that I clearly agree with. Words I just wish the government chose to follow themselves.

Now, I’m going to read another quote from another member. I’ve become quite good friends with this member, and I don’t mean this with any disrespect at all. I just mean it to…. I recognize that this member is probably struggling with the decision, because I truly believe this member’s heart is in the right place. I truly believe this member wants to do the right thing, and I truly believe this member is frustrated. I’ll let you guess who this member is. I won’t say the member’s name.

The member said this on April 23, 2015, to the Miscellaneous Statutes Amendment Act, Bill 23. We were doing some LNG stuff. This is what he said:

“They must come through with some kind of approved project at any cost. The cost was defined in Bill 6 debate around LNG royalties and corporate taxation. Now we have Bill 23 that opens the door to any giveaway that government should imagine would materialize a deal. Not only are they actually opening the door to the favourable provisions around tax benefits, tax cuts and royalties, but this bill essentially shields those agreements from Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act scope.

“Not only are these deals going to be offered, at any cost to the interests of British Columbians, in order to achieve a political benefit for the B.C. Liberal government — a promise during the election which, of course, could never have been fulfilled — but even to remotely come close to actioning the promises that the government made during the election campaign….

“Having made this great commitment, having now opened the barn doors to any imaginable benefit to be offered to these corporations, having hidden it from FOI scope so that the people cannot discover what those agreements might be, using project development agreements which are more common in the Third World….”

“Project development agreements more common in the Third World.” I’m going to have to pause there, because I just had a light bulb go up.

Interjection.

A. Weaver: You might want to use this later, this quote here: “Project development agreements which are more common in the Third World.”

[2:45 p.m.]

We just signed project development agreements on the Port Mann Bridge, on the highway near Revelstoke — not Port Mann, on the Pattullo Bridge — and there’s talk about more project development agreements being signed in the near future, and other infrastructure projects too.

The member’s own words here are that project development agreements are more common in the Third World. That’s odd. He gave a shout-out to me, this member:

“As the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head said, it is not just a generational sellout but a multigenerational sellout. In fact, what we see is the B.C. Liberal government saying it’s the resource of the people of B.C. In order for us to save our political skins, we must have the free hand to give this resource away, perpetuity, to hide that giveaway from the public and not even require the approval of cabinet to make that giveaway.”

How little has changed in just a couple of years on this particular file.

They’re coming back to the main…. Obviously, I’ve got many more. Hon. Speaker, could you give me a sense of the time on this?

Deputy Speaker: Forty-six minutes remaining.

A. Weaver: Thank you. Oh, great. Let’s go to Vancouver-Fairview then. Let’s have some comments there.

We’ve been very clear — the B.C. Green party have — all through this, that we’re never going to support the expansion of this taxpayer-funded giveaway, and we’re not going to help the B.C. NDP implement this generational sellout. We’re going to remain focused on seeing B.C. seize the opportunity that it has to build a sustainable economy based on the foundation that was outlined in CleanBC. That is exciting. That is where our focus is.

After years of criticizing the B.C. Liberals for their giveaway of our natural gas royalties, the B.C. NDP have, as I’ve mentioned, taken it to a whole new level. Just to provide some context to that, I’d like to pivot to some of those very salient remarks from the Minister of Environment, also known as the member for Vancouver-Fairway. Fraserview?

Interjection.

A. Weaver: Vancouver-Fairview. Fairway is a local grocery store here in town. I don’t recommend they send any MLAs to represent them here.

Let’s take a look at these. This is a debate on the LNG projects. Hansard provides so much richness in terms of hypocrisy of the B.C. NDP on this file. We didn’t even know where to begin. But these are some fine comments made by the Minister of the Environment, who knows my frustration on this file, as we’ve talked many times over CleanBC. I’m very pleased with the direction we’ve got on CleanBC, but we’re not there yet.

This is what he had to say:

“Let's look at what the benefits are to British Columbia. What we are seeing in this agreement is a particularly favourable tax regime for this proponent, one that will be replicated for other proponents in the future. It allows the proponent to write off capital costs against profits until they're paid off. It also allows a particular reduction in the corporate tax, and it has a lower special natural gas LNG tax than was originally proposed by the government.”

Fair enough. And the B.C. NDP just want to get rid of it entirely.

“But critically, it locks that in for a period of 25 years. I listened to the Minister of Finance on CBC, about a week ago, say, ‘Oh, no, no. We're not binding the hands of future governments. We're simply saying that if a future government changes a tax regime, the proponent will be reimbursed dollar for dollar by the people of British Columbia.’ It's sophistry. That's tying the hands of future governments. It's tying the hands of British Columbians.”

Well, what are we doing right now? Right now this government is saying: “We’re okay hurling abuse at the B.C. Liberals for not having a stringent enough tax regime, so what we’re going to do is to eliminate it entirely, but” — but — “we want to ensure that the companies still get a credit. And let’s not worry about those capital costs. Let’s exempt you from PST during the construction.” Like another one of their great giveaways that was not in the original NDP project development agreement with Petronas. I mean, I don’t even know where to begin. No, that was Liberal beforehand.

The Minister of Environment also said this:

“It’s not keeping our environmental options open for government and the people of B.C. It is not leaving room for a future government to deal with the environmental policies or to deal with measures that have costs that are important, that we may deem to be important in the future.

[2:50 p.m.]

“That is why so many people on this side of the House disagree with the government’s approach, disagree with the 25-year deals and disagree with the guaranteeing to Pacific NorthWest LNG and Petronas that they will not have any additional costs if things change, as we know they will, over the next 25 years.”

Let’s come back to where we are now. I’ve heard members of this government talk about IPCC reports. I was a lead author, 1995; on the second report, 2001; on the third, 2007; on the fourth, 2013. It was tough on that one, because I was in an election campaign, trying to write a chapter on…. Anyway, there as well. I can tell you that these members understand the importance of climate change. At least they say that they do, and they’re not shy about telling the electorate that they do. They’re not shy at all.

They will know from those climate change reports that the latest one, which I wasn’t part of, suggests that we have 12 years to turn around. That’s a meaningless number. I’ll be honest with you. Climate change is going to…. We’re going to have a certain amount. The question is how much we, as a society, are willing to accept. There’s no magic number of ten, five, six, seven years.

I will tell you this. The world has already warmed by over a degree. It’s warmed by over a degree. We know that the level of CO₂ in the atmosphere is a little over 410 parts per million. We know that if we do no more than keep existing levels fixed, we’re going to warm by another 0.6 degrees. That’ll take us to 1.6.

All this talk about 1.5 degrees is hooey, because we’re already going to break 1.5. We also know the permafrost carbon feedback is going to give us another 0.1 to 0.2. We know we’re going to hit 1.7, 1.8, 1.9 degrees. That’s regardless of what we do. That’s the baseline.

For this government to start using sound bites from the Liberals about how we’ll save China from themselves by shipping them LNG is a little bit remarkable to me in light of the fact that what the IPCC is saying, what the climate community is saying, is decarbonization begins now, not 25, 30 years from now. It’s now. If we want to deal with this problem, then there is no solution but to start now.

The Paris treaty, signed by Canada, to which this Minister of Environment went and was proud to be seen at, committed the world to keeping warming below 2 degrees, substantially below 2 degrees. The direct translation of that statement is this: effective immediately, we can put no more money into building new fossil fuel infrastructure that will be around for decades to come. Decarbonization begins now. Today. That’s what Paris said.

The reason why I say that is that you don’t build infrastructure today to tear it down tomorrow. Nobody in the climate science community is saying shut down the tar sands. Nobody’s saying stop producing oil and gas.

What we’re saying is that if you care about this problem, then you have no choice but to stop building new infrastructure today, because when you build that infrastructure today, you’re committing emissions for decades to come. You build a coal factory today. It’ll be in place for 50 years. You’re committing 50 years of coal-burning emissions in doing so. You build a two-train LNG facility, you’re committing four megatonnes of emissions in perpetuity.

We all know that LNG Canada actually has an environmental permit for four trains — not two but four. They have a permit in place for four trains. Now, this government will say: “Oh, we’ve only given them approval for two.” Well, they don’t need approval for the other four. They’ve already got the permit. I can tell you, and I’m willing to stake a bunch of money on this, that if you build two, you’re going to build four, because you’ve already invested fixed capital costs that you don’t have to double-invest. You’ve got the site there, and away we go.

This is very dangerous. This is a government that is actually trying to have its cake and eat it too. I commend this government for the work on CleanBC. It is good public policy. The ZEV mandate — good public policy. The rollout of infrastructure — good public policy. The changing of building codes — good public policy. The cottage industry of small business that will be created as we move down that path, like we did when Gordon Campbell brought in the LiveSmart program back in 2007 — a whole cottage industry of small business developed. That will happen as well. So I’m pleased with that.

At the same time, going after LNG Canada is reckless. It’s actually giving false hope to the people of Kitimat and Terrace. For a long time, we’ve been saying this. We understand that the economics of the rural north are hurting. It’s hurting precisely because of the all-in attitude that the previous government took to natural gas. You must diversify economy to make it resilient to the ebb and flow of commodity prices.

[2:55 p.m.]

The north needs diversification. The way we get diversification is by bringing in broadband — which this government is doing, after some pestering — bringing in tech, ensuring that we reinvigorate a manufacturing sector.

We have access to that clean energy like no one else in the world. Where are B.C. Hydro and this government in signalling out to the world that we want you to bring your manufacturing here? We want you to bring manufacturing to Terrace, to Kitimat, to Prince Rupert, to Burns Lake — all along that northern corridor where that rail line connects Prince Rupert to Chicago. The gateway to Asia. The gateway to the eastern U.S.

That is the hope that we should be focusing on. That is the hopeful message that we have an opportunity to deliver on, not this promise for prosperity from a pot of gold that may or may not ever materialize, a pot of gold that we’re giving away. Those who might reap the benefits will be multinational shareholders sitting in some office tower, probably not in Vancouver.

Let’s find some more comments by the member for Vancouver-Fairview, because he also provided some insight into his criticism with respect to the previous government’s efforts on this file. Here’s one, April 5, 2016.

“We have a government that on the one hand talks about a climate action plan and being a climate leader and, on the other hand, brings in legislation to govern an industry as if that industry would operate in complete and total isolation from an overall provincial climate plan, from commitments made by this government to control and reduce greenhouse gas emissions overall.

“In reality, when we voted against Bill 2 in the first place, we said clearly said that we criticized the bill, as did independent members” — that was me at the time and Vicki Huntington — “mainly because it excluded upstream greenhouse gas emissions from the ‘world’s cleanest LNG benchmark’ — which we said isn’t a world’s cleanest LNG benchmark at all. It’s a sham. It’s illusory.

“You can’t take an entire industry that depends on extraction, transportation, construction, power, export and ultimate burning of the fuel and pretend that, if you’re accounting for cleanliness in a mere 30 percent of it and ignoring another 70 percent, you’re developing the world’s cleanest LNG.”

Yet that is precisely what this government wants to do right now. It wants LNG Canada to be viewed as the cleanest LNG in the world — using the exact same language as they criticize the NDP for but not willing to consider that, in fact, there’s electric compression in the U.S. Gulf Coast, and that is cleaner.

In order to kind of square that round peg…. In a briefing, I’m told: “Well, we’re going to count the upstream supply of where the electricity costs down there.” What about the fact that the natural gas is conventional versus unconventional? Are you going to be accounting for that? Because conventional gas is an awful lot easier to get out of the ground Jed Clampett–style.

That dates me. Should have had a couple of chuckles from some of the older gentlemen on the other side there. Bubbling crude?

An Hon. Member: We’re all younger than you.

A. Weaver: Sad, sad.

We’ll continue:

“You can’t take an entire industry that depends on extraction, transportation, construction, power, export and ultimate burning of the fuel and pretend that, if you’re accounting for cleanliness in a mere 30 percent of it and ignoring 70 percent, you’re developing the world’s cleanest LNG.

“We have a government that says, ‘Here we have this industry that will deliver everything for British Columbia’ over here, and over here: ‘British Columbia has been a climate leader. We have demonstrated climate leadership, and we’re going to continue to demonstrate climate leadership and be at the head of the pack.’”

I’ll say that again. This is what the member for Vancouver-Fairview, the Minister of the Environment says. He’s saying this cynically and with derision. “We have a government that says, ‘Here we have this industry that will deliver everything for British Columbia’ over here, and over here: ‘British Columbia has been a climate leader. We have demonstrated climate leadership, and we’re going to continue to demonstrate leadership and be at the head of the pack.’”

To quote the Minister of Environment: “There is no connection between these two statements” — hear, hear — “and Bill 19 does nothing to establish that connection.” So what has changed? All that has changed is that now you’re in a decision-making position.

[3:00 p.m.]

Rather than recognize that you were on the right side of history when you stood and pointed out that this was a generational sellout, you’ve fallen in the same trap — race-for-the-bottom economics in a desperate attempt to try to land something that Christy Clark couldn’t.

As far as I can tell, it’s solely for bragging rights. There’s no economic sense in it, because of the giveaway that you’re doing in terms of electricity; the fact that the jobs are essentially offshore where we construct this; the fact that we’re exempting PST, the steel tariff; the fact that we’re asking all British Columbians to pay a carbon tax but not LNG Canada. They don’t have to pay the tax above 30 bucks, because they are going to be cleanest in the world — but not really. So we’ll change the rules so we can call them the cleanest in the world even though they’re not.

This is the kind of hypocrisy explained by this government. At any given time, we have to ask the following question: what do we do about this hypocrisy? We call it out, yes. We give the opportunity for members opposite to stand up and join us in voting this down. I’m sure each and every one of you has your own litany of quotes that you’re just itching to read into the record, like I am.

I’m looking forward to seeing you actually stand by those quotes, stand by the fact that you took the responsible position. You recognized that there has to be something in this for British Columbia. I didn’t like the direction you were going. I thought you were trying to squeeze rock from a stone, but never in my wildest dreams did I think you had to take that stone and put it in a hydraulic press to try to desperately get water out, like the B.C. NDP have done. I look to your support.

I look to the B.C. NDP. I ask the question of those backbenchers in the B.C. NDP, who, I understand, know the seriousness of this decision before them: what matters to you, to the back bench? Does your integrity? Do future generations matter? Or are you going to toe the line and support this direction by government, after having to hear three years, maybe four, of the same government hurling abuse at members opposite?

You know, the B.C. NDP don’t own this LNG file. They’re simply trying to fulfil the B.C. Liberals’ vision. Made a few more minor tweaks. Gave things away even more. It seems to me that both the B.C. NDP and, to a lesser extent, ironically — I never thought I’d say this — the B.C. Liberals….

Interjection.

A. Weaver: I’m voting with you now, if you want.

They are both two sides of the same coin. Flip the coin, heads or tails, it doesn’t really matter. You get LNG and all its negative pollution on that side. You get corporate welfare on that side. You get corporate welfare on steroids on this side.

That is really odd, because this is supposedly a left-of-centre government. But in recent days, we’re starting to see a government more along the lines of what you might envision in a conservative approach, a Stephen Harper approach.

I’ll say that for a couple of reasons. Look at the war on drugs. We’re starting to see, like with the civil forfeiture bill, the act that’s brought forward…. The B.C. NDP, and particularly the Attorney General, criticized the B.C. Liberals for bringing in civil forfeiture law as being draconian, as being police state. Now we have the B.C. NDP taking it to a whole new level.

We have the B.C. LNG. We have the climate plan. The B.C. NDP criticized the B.C. Liberals for ignoring the climate plan and focusing on LNG and giving a generational sellout. Here, sure, we have a climate plan, but it’s the same sellout but at a higher level. We’ve actually taken the giveaway and added some steroids to it.

I have much more, and I will speak to my amendment. At this stage, I would like to move:

[That the motion for second reading on Bill 10, Income Tax Amendment Act, 2019, be amended by deleting all the words after “that” and substitute the words “be not now read a second time as the BC government has not yet identified a pathway that brings us 100% to our 2030 target, and it is inconsistent to add significant new emissions sources even as we strive to show the world that it is possible to develop a low carbon, sustainable economy that can meet our targets.”]

I have multiple copies of this signed reasoned amendment to pass to the Table. I’ll wait a few minutes before I speak to the amendment.

Interjection.

[3:05 p.m.]

A. Weaver: No, this is reasoned. We’ve got the hoist coming.

Deputy Speaker: The member has moved: “That the motion for second reading on Bill 10, Income Tax Amendment Act, 2019, be amended by deleting all the words after ‘that’ and substitute the words ‘be not now read a second time as the BC government has not yet identified a pathway that brings us 100% to our 2030 target, and it is inconsistent to add significant new emissions sources even as we strive to show the world that it is possible to develop a low carbon, sustainable economy that can meet our targets.’”

You may proceed.

On the amendment.

A. Weaver: I have a few words to speak in favour of this amendment. First off, the amendment is important because the amendment peels right back to the four conditions that the Premier said needed to be satisfied before this government was going to support LNG. One of those conditions was that we had to fit it within our climate targets. That’s an important reason. Now, the climate targets have been articulated both in CASA as well as in legislation — that is, a 40 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions relative to 2007 levels by 2030, with interim targets as well.

[3:10 p.m.]

We have identified, in the CleanBC plan, a pathway to reach 75 percent of those emissions, assuming all goes well and everything is met. Twenty-five percent is the wedge, the gap that has not been met. What is being proposed with the Income Tax Act is that we are going to add 3.45 megatonnes of emissions. Those are LNG Canada numbers. Pembina estimates would be higher. And we have to get to 75 percent below.

Now, had we identified 100 percent, this reasoned amendment would have been viewed as out of order, of course. But we have not. So the fact of the matter is that the Premier has said that we cannot go ahead as a province with LNG Canada until such time as it fits within our climate plans. Those are his words, reiterated again by the Deputy Premier, the Finance Minister, in her opening remarks to this bill.

The amendment says this. We have not made it that way. We’ve only identified a pathway to 75 percent of the way there. Were LNG Canada not to go ahead, the six megatonne gap that exists…. Two-thirds of that would vaporize because two-thirds of that gap is essentially being added from LNG Canada.

I would suggest that the members in government should be resoundingly supporting this amendment, as well, in light of the fact that they actually told British Columbians that they would only support LNG if it fit in our climate targets. They have yet to show that that is the case. The fact that they’re trying to bring this in now is not consistent with their intentions as singled out to the broader electorate.

You know, we’ve been pushing, down here in the B.C. Green caucus, for quite some time, a different vision for how the province of British Columbia might move forward. Not a vision of saying no but a vision of capitalizing on our strengths and building an economy that’s resilient and sustainable, that focuses on our strengths and recognizes our strategic opportunities that allow us to compete in areas that others can’t. That is what we’ve been pushing for — a 21st-century economy, investing in renewable energy infrastructure and transforming the province into a destination for innovation and for innovative industries to thrive. This is what should be happening.

Sadly, today I missed a meeting with a shipbuilding group. Shipbuilding is a classic example of what we should be doing here. People will say: “Oh, shipbuilding is an old industry.” Think about it this way. Right now we have, in Richmond, B.C., one of the leading companies in the world in terms of the development of storage batteries for ferries. We ship those batteries and that technology to Poland and Norway, where they build these ferries and they use them. They’re using B.C. technologies in electric ferries in Europe.

We just had an announcement here that B.C. Ferries is considering building a passenger transportation ferry from the West Shore to downtown Victoria. What an ideal opportunity. We know that there are 30-something B.C. ferries in the B.C. fleet. We know that each B.C. ferry lasts 30-something years.

Why is it that in B.C., we’re not thinking about building a sustainable, resilient shipbuilding industry? We know the government could signal in that we’re going to need one ship a year and we’re going to rotate through our B.C. Ferries fleet every 35 years. This is a place where we know we can actually put in place standing orders, and we can feed B.C. innovation into practice by developing the latest and best and shipping that technology elsewhere.

That is what leadership is. That is what a sustainable, resilient, new economy is. That would be getting places like Nanaimo. Nanaimo, which is turning into a satellite home for people who live and work in Vancouver, should and could go back to its roots and should be having a vibrant shipbuilding industry there. But again, we have people who are afraid of showing the leadership that needs to be shown on this file.

We have a company that builds forklifts in Germany wanting to relocate to Langford. We have a company that builds electric buses that moved to Edmonton, and they wanted to be in B.C. There are so many manufacturing companies that want to come to B.C.

We’ve got Langford mayor Stew Young, who has already zoned an industrial park for clean business to grow. But what it needs, again, is the government to send a signal that they want it. It needs government to identify people within its Premier’s office, within its ministries, who are going to be the go-to people for industry and manufacturing that want to come to B.C. — to know who to go and ask questions of. Right now people don’t know who to ask, because no one quite knows who’s on first base.

[3:15 p.m.]

These are the opportunities. Truly implementing CleanBC provides a pathway to a carbon-neutral economy, one in which British Columbia is free from having to rely upon the boom-and-bust cycles of fossil fuels.

The International Renewable Energy Agency, for example, recently reported that there are over ten million jobs in renewable energy — ten million jobs. At the 2016 UN Climate Change Conference, 48 countries have agreed already to make 100 percent of their energy production renewable by 2050. So 48 countries. Not Canada. Not British Columbia. Not Canada.

The rest of the world is moving into the future while this government is tethering us to the past. And unfortunately, with this legislation, we’re allowing LNG Canada to make history for all the wrong reasons. We’re actually saying that we want to enable the single largest point source of carbon emissions in this country’s history under the watch of this government. Is this really what our province wants to be known for? Is this really what this government wants to be known for? Is this really what this government wants to risk?

All the good work that’s been done in terms of affordability. All the good work that’s been done in health care. Very impressed with the good work being done by the Minister of Health. The good work being done in child care. The good work being done in the Attorney General’s office. Is this really what this government wants to risk?

It wants to risk all of that goodwill solely to try to land a project that Christy Clark couldn’t and, in order to do so, undercut all of your principles and point out — as I’ve done, and I’m sure members opposite are — the grand hypocrisy of those last four years that many of you sat in this House. Many of your words are coming back to haunt you as you say one thing, but now what is good for the goose is no longer good for the gander. Is this really what your government wants to be known for?

Is this really what the members on your back bench…? The member for Powell River–Sunshine Coast. Is this really what he wants to be known for? The newly elected member for Nanaimo, who claims to be an environmentalist. Is this really what she got into politics for? The member for North Vancouver–Lonsdale. Is this really what she wants to be known for?

The member for Nanaimo–North Cowichan. The member for Burnaby North. Is this really what they want to be known for — standing up and blindly voting in support of the single biggest point source of greenhouse gas emissions in Canadian history at a pivotal time in human history when we have to set the path on decarbonization?

This government wants to take the sellout that they described of the B.C. Liberals to a whole new level — on steroids. Exempt the PST. Don’t have to pay the carbon tax. Redefine what “cleanest” is. Give you Site C power. You don’t have to use electricity in the compression. No steel tariffs. No PST in construction.

Did you offer them your second babies? Did you offer them to pay your speculation tax too? I mean, this clearly was a deal written by LNG Canada for LNG Canada.

Interjections.

A. Weaver: Probably got an exemption for that as well. Good point raised by the member for Peace River South suggesting that we haven’t really got that on the paper yet. There’s probably going to be an…. Well, there’s no exemption, because they’re all going to be temporary foreign workers. Why would you exempt on the employer health tax?

We will be voting against this legislation and in support of this amendment. I will, at this stage, take my place in the debate. I have so much more to add. But I look forward to any other amendments that might come forward. If I get an opportunity at that time, I would love to speak in favour of anything. But I assume that members opposite will support this reasoned amendment and move this down the road.

S. Furstenau: I want to give just a few words in support of the amendment moved by my colleague from Oak Bay–Gordon Head.

Like many members in this House, I live in a small community, Shawnigan Lake, right in the heart of the Cowichan Valley south of the Cowichan River, one of the few rivers on the Island that still has a steelhead run and a chinook salmon run, the salmon that the southern resident orca rely on for their survival.

[3:20 p.m.]

As an MLA, I have the responsibility and the pleasure to serve other communities throughout the Cowichan Valley: Cobble Hill, Mill Bay, Duncan, Lake Cowichan, Youbou, Maple Bay and so many others. I’ve also had the opportunity to visit numerous communities represented by other members of this House. From Prince Rupert to Prince George, Keremeos to Kaslo, Stewart to Smithers, my family and I have made a point of seeing as much of British Columbia as we can.

I’ve always been struck by the fact that despite the uniqueness of individual communities in B.C., there is much more that we share in common than what sets us apart. We all share a love of this beautiful province that we call home. Everyone wants opportunities for themselves and their children. Communities across the province have always tackled challenges by harnessing innovation and entrepreneurial spirit and the ability to work together.

Every community across the province is on the front line of climate change. Whether it’s wildfires and floods threatening our towns and displacing our communities or drought leading to crop failures or species extinctions, which steal so much of what defines the physical beauty of our province, B.C.’s communities see and feel the costs of climate change directly. There is no community in our province where this is not the case.

We must strive for more than band-aid solutions. We must be willing to challenge the way we do things in this province. It’s why our caucus has put so much energy into ensuring CleanBC wasn’t simply a climate or environmental plan but one that offered a different vision for the future of our province, a different vision for who we might be and how we might prosper.

We have to change the way we do things in this prov­ince. Simply pursuing economic growth while neglecting the health and well-being of our people, the resilience and adaptability of communities and the health of our democracy will not set us on a better path. We need an economy that serves the citizens of B.C. and an economy that will point us in the direction that we want to go — to a clean, sustainable, livable future. We owe it to our grandchildren and their grandchildren to do everything we can today to get us there.

This is the inconsistency of what we have in front of us now. If we are truly committed to striving for a new vision for our province, to strengthening our ability to adapt and respond to climate change, then we must reject doubling down on the status quo. Pursuing an LNG industry is not offering communities a sustainable opportunity. It’s tying ourselves to the same boom-and-bust cycles that we see in all fossil fuel development, and it is contributing to the very thing that is putting all of our communities most at risk.

We must have the courage to reject the enticement of the status quo way of doing things. “One more time. One last plant. Next time it will be different.” These are the refrains of government past. Not this time. Not one more. Something else. Something better. This is the real opportunity in front of us.

So no, let’s not accept this government acting like every other government before it. Our focus must be on building the economic, social and environmental vision that will allow us to reach our targets and, in doing so, build healthier, sustainable communities, where our children and their grandchildren can thrive.

A. Olsen: I stand today to speak in support of my colleague’s amendment to Bill 10, the Income Tax Amendment Act, 2019.

I see my colleagues in this place with their kids and the joy and the smiles that they have on their face when they’re able to reconnect with their children or their grandchildren in this place, and I wonder where the disconnect happened. I have the benefit, the honour, to be able to go home at the end of the day and spend time with my family, and I recognize that I’m one of the very few in this House that has the ability to do that.

[3:25 p.m.]

It’s not lost on me, the wisdom of those children. I know that when my colleagues go back home and they reconnect with their families, with their kids, their children and their grandchildren, they can see the inspiration and the creativity that comes from those little perfect human beings.

It’s very frustrating to wind my way through the misdirection, the miscalculation, the misinformation that is LNG in British Columbia, the cognitive dissonance. At a time when eight- and nine-year-old children are standing on the front steps of this building, everybody — our colleagues, our friends that are in local government — is falling all over themselves to be a part of that.

Falling all over themselves to have their pictures taken with those children, in the background of those children with those beautiful signs that they have written. Elbowing their way into those pictures and on to the microphone, to be standing with those eight- and nine-year-old children. Somehow, some way, the decisions that have been made in buildings just like this have inspired them to become marchers, protesters, activists at a time in their life when they need to not be activists — to be anything but protesters.

Somehow they’ve been inspired by their peers that are just a little bit older than them to be standing outside in front. See, they’re asking for different decisions to be made. They’re asking their current government to make different decisions than the previous one. In many respects, those eight- and nine-year-olds voted for the people in this place in their school vote.

We see these signs. We see the message on the signs. “We should be preparing for the future, not fighting for it.” “The climate is changing. Why aren’t we?” This is what our kids are putting on signs to bring in front of their Legislature asking, demanding, that their decision-makers pull themselves up from out of the boil that is in this place, to make a different decision.

Those kids have been inspired by one particularly powerful young woman. In fact, by many particularly powerful young people. But it started with this particularly powerful young woman who decided at some point that she was going to pull herself out of school — Greta Thunberg is her name — take herself out of school, make herself a sign and go sit on the front steps of the Swedish Parliament. Very similar to this place.

Her words should indeed be a wake-up call. In fact, when we disconnect LNG from the conversation, you can hear and see Greta Thunberg be celebrated by many of our friends. Many of our own family members are calling us to stand with Greta Thunberg. Yet somehow, the cognitive dissonance in this place, the disconnection, the misinformation, the misdirection, the miscalculation of this place allows us to disconnect for just a brief moment in time so that we can be wooed by only part of this debate — the dog whistle part of this debate.

Greta Thunberg says: “I am doing this because nobody else is doing anything.” How sad is that — that a 15-year-old can say with some certainty that she’s doing this because nobody else is doing anything? She says: “It is my moral responsibility to do what I can.”

What is our moral responsibility? Do we share in Greta Thunberg’s moral responsibility to do what we can? I think so.

She says: “I want politicians to prioritize the climate question, focus on the climate and treat it like a crisis.” It is a crisis. She says: “I have my books here. But I’m also thinking: ‘What am I missing? What am I going to learn in school?’ Facts don’t matter any more. Politicians aren’t listening to the scientists, so why should I learn?”

[3:30 p.m.]

What sense of hopelessness are we instilling in our children that they somehow find the words at 15 to string together that their politicians aren’t listening to scientists, so what is the point of learning?

We have a responsibility as leaders to respond to Greta’s call, not by patting her and them, the children out there, on their heads but by taking real action, by finding the courage within us to relieve ourselves of the burden that this decision that’s going to be in front of every member of this House — not just the right and the left, this side and that side, our side and their side, but by all 87 members in this place….

We are the ones that can set our government on a path that shows that we actually care about the problems that our children are inheriting from us.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

We can pretend like we don’t understand them. We can pretend like we are disconnected from them. But we take those problems home with us. So at this critical moment, we all have a choice.

The argument that we must do this because there’s nothing else has long since lost its glow. The CleanBC plan that my colleagues and I helped build with government shows just how incorrect that view is. Why we water it down with major fossil fuel expansion is beyond me. We should be leaning into the opportunities that we have to be an innovation hub in this country, on this continent, in this hemisphere and in this world.

I and my colleagues will not support any more taxpayer-funded gifts to subsidize climate change. That is absurd. It is insanity. I will be able to look my children in the eyes and tell them that I stood on their side of history.

M. Bernier: I appreciate the members from the Third Party bringing forward an amendment and, more importantly, highlighting a lot of the hypocrisy of the now government and what they’ve brought forward.

We have a lot of concerns, obviously, that we’ve raised not only earlier in my speech but as members of our side of the House in opposition will be raising later on that we want to really dive into at committee stage and really get some solid answers from government on where they came up with a lot of these issues and numbers and figure out how they’re going to actually be able to square the circle on some of the issues, especially that the member for Oak Bay–Gordon Head raised.

At this time, we won’t be able to support the amendment and look forward to further speakers.

[3:35 p.m.]

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Mr. Speaker: Members, the question is on the amendment moved by the Third Party Leader: “That the motion for second reading on Bill 10, Income Tax Amendment Act, 2019, be amended by deleting all the words after ‘that’ and substitute the words ‘be not now read a second time as the BC government has not yet identified a pathway that brings us 100% to our 2030 budget, and it is inconsistent to add significant new emissions sources even as we strive to show the world that it is possible to develop a low carbon, sustainable economy that can meet our targets.’”

[3:40 p.m.]

Amendment negatived on the following division:

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

Deputy Speaker: We are now continuing with the second reading.

On the main motion.

Interjection.

Deputy Speaker: Sorry, Member, no. I’m going to go with the next speaker.

Hon. M. Mungall: I rise in support of Bill 10 today, which is our Income Tax Amendment Act. I’m going to speak to how we came to this place for this bill. Just for those who might be watching at home, these are some amendments that are part of our LNG framework that this government developed in the spring of last year.

How did we come to this place? Well, when I was first appointed and first sworn in as Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources on July 18, 2017, six days later, Petronas, which was the major backer of Pacific NorthWest LNG, had decided that they needed to move away from that project, abandon that and dissolve it, essentially, because of global market conditions that were not favourable for their particular project — six days into a new job as minister responsible for this. It was, of course, a project that had been driven, considerably, by the old government, as they were starting to develop the new industry of liquefied natural gas in the province.

[3:45 p.m.]

I should correct myself right there, because of course, liquefied natural gas is not just a new concept under the previous government. As the Premier and others have mentioned in the past, it is an industry that has been explored since the 1980s, since I was a small child. But it wasn’t until relatively recently that the world started to turn its head to liquefying natural gas for export as demand for energy grew, mostly in Asian countries. More and more jurisdictions around the world that have natural gas started to look at growing this industry from resources in their jurisdictions. British Columbia, of course, having a natural gas sector, also looked at developing this industry.

I should mention that those who represent the Peace country in the northeast of the province can tell you of the Montney play, the Montney field — however you want to categorize it — in that area. We know that we have hundreds of years of natural gas available here in British Columbia alone. Not surprisingly, the British Columbia government of the day thought that LNG could prove to be an opportunity for B.C. on that world stage.

Now, I don’t necessarily agree that some of the big promises that came from the attempt to sell the industry to the public were necessarily accurate and were necessary in the first place. I think an honest conversation with British Columbians would have sufficed. Nevertheless, it wasn’t entirely shocking, necessarily, that those big promises weren’t realized right away, because it takes time. But it was, I think, very disappointing — and, I know, very disappointing, particularly, for communities in the northwest of British Columbia — when Petronas had to leave their project.

There were many communities, First Nations and non-Indigenous communities, that were looking at LNG as a serious opportunity for their economic development. When Petronas left, six days into our government being in place, I of course heard from those communities on what that loss meant for them, especially Indigenous communities. For them, they saw job opportunities leave. They saw training opportunities leave. They saw opportunities for funding social programs in their communities leave.

Mayors of non-Indigenous communities were similar. They saw the job opportunities leave. They saw training opportunities leave. They saw economic development for their area leave. That was very upsetting for them, but they didn’t want to see LNG be abandoned entirely by government. They wanted to see those opportunities be realized, because there were other projects out there. They had stepped away under the old government, and they wanted to see those projects, potentially, come back.

Obviously, as a new government, we had to take their considerations seriously. We have to take this new industry seriously. When you’re looking at a $40 billion investment — $24 billion of that in private investment — coming directly to this province; $23 billion in revenue coming to this province in the form of taxation over the life of the project; 10,000 jobs during the construction phase; 950 permanent jobs in northern B.C…. These are the very reasons why any government, regardless of political stripe, needs to take a serious look at this industry.

When one company with a very large project leaves the province saying, “Global market conditions are disallowing us to continue on,” it’s why we, as a government, had to say: “Well, why is that? What is the lay of the land, globally, for this industry?”

[3:50 p.m.]

How does B.C. factor into that lay of the land? Are we going to see no opportunity at all? If we don’t see any opportunity at all from this new industry, that means that First Nations across the north, non-Indigenous communities across the north, who had been working for years…. I know that the member for Skeena can speak to this personally because of the work that he did for his community and his nation on this very issue.

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members, the minister has the floor.

Hon. M. Mungall: As I was saying, the member for Skeena can speak personally from his experience of working on this very issue for many years. He knows directly how this is going to benefit his community and the Haisla Nation, how seriously his community takes this industry and what they want to see from any government, regardless of political stripe, going forward, when a company like Petronas had to leave British Columbia.

They wanted to see a government that was going to look into this. They wanted to see a government that was going to come back with solutions. And that’s what we did. We looked at: what were those global conditions going on? We looked at how B.C. factored into the global lay of the land. And we looked at what would need to happen if we were going to actually be competitive on that global scale.

As we did that, we also said that whatever we do, it has to meet our four conditions. These are principles that we identified in 2011. These are principles that we said we will uphold if an LNG industry is going to move forward in British Columbia.

Those four conditions are: a reasonable or a fair rate of return for B.C.’s resources…. We said that it needs to provide jobs and training opportunities to British Columbians first and foremost. We said that there need to be meaningful partnerships with First Nations. We said that we will not abandon our need to protect our air, land and water and that any project also must fit within our climate targets. Those are our four conditions.

We also looked at those competitiveness issues that we had, and we were able to find a way forward. A year ago we announced that way forward with our new LNG framework. A large part of that framework was placing LNG on the same footing as other industries so that they would be paying the same industrial rate for electricity and that we would be able to use various tax incentives that other industries have used over the years, such as the PST deferral that we have. We also looked at the corporate income tax rate, which is part of this bill here.

Now, if Shell Canada was headquartered in British Columbia, they would be able to benefit from that income tax credit that we’re doing, but they’re not. They’re head­quartered in Alberta. But we wanted to put that in this legislation because we wanted to make sure that it was clear going forward for the industry as a whole.

Furthermore, what we have done is we have repealed the old government’s approach that would have allowed for companies to be indemnified if future governments made any taxation changes or so on. We took that type of handcuffing off of future governments — for having to act in the best interests of the citizens of their day — that the previous government had in place. Those are some of the things that you would find in this bill.

[3:55 p.m.]

Now, I’ve mentioned that this is all part of our new LNG framework. I’ve mentioned why I think it’s important that any government, regardless of political stripe, needs to have taken this industry seriously by looking at the economic benefits that it has for communities, the economic benefits that it has for British Columbia as a whole.

When I talk about $23 billion of revenue to British Columbia over the life of that project, I immediately think of the things that my constituents and their children care about. They want to see a universal child care program. I know that so do many other people in this House.

They want to see affordable housing. We have a crisis in affordable housing in this province. In my community, there are two projects proposed right now that are working with B.C. Housing as we speak. The amount of units that they’re going to be able to put forward into our community isn’t nearly enough of what we need in Nelson alone. The same can be said for Creston, for Salmo, for Kaslo — all communities that I represent.

Health care, seniors care. Long-term care for seniors — desperately needed in rural communities all across British Columbia. In my community, we know that our seniors need to be taken care of. The struggle to make that happen, after years of massive changes to the health care system, is quite large — that challenge. We need to move forward and address that challenge.

The other things that my constituents care about. They care about climate change. They care about meeting our climate targets. LNG Canada, this particular project that is actually at a final investment decision, fits within our climate action plan. The revenue that we’re able to generate from this project is funding things like support for electric vehicles so that everybody can reduce their carbon emissions through the very way in which they travel between our communities.

People in Kaslo. It takes an hour to get to Nelson. Most people in Kaslo will do a lot of their shopping in Kaslo, but they’ll have to do a lot of grocery shopping as well in Nelson. Just imagine their ability….

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members, let’s have one speech at a time.

Minister, continue.

Hon. M. Mungall: People in Kaslo. It takes an hour to get to Nelson. Now, just imagine that they’re able to do that, rather than with a combustion engine, in a zero-emission vehicle that they’re able to purchase — it’s made more affordable — with the incentives provided by this government.

I have constituents in Salmo who are excited about getting a heat pump, but its cost is just outside of their reach. With CleanBC, we’re making it more in line with their budgets. We’re making heat pumps more affordable, and we’re able to deliver on more of those types of programs because we’ve been able to generate revenue.

When I look at the type of revenue that would come from LNG Canada, the values that my constituents have and what we’re able to do with the revenue coming from that project that fits within our climate targets, I look at the opportunities that we are able to give as a government to the people I represent. I look at their values, and I look at the things that matter to them and us being able to deliver on that.

We’re able to do that because of the LNG framework that this government developed. We’re able do that because we are taking meaningful action. We’re taking it seriously. We are looking at this seriously. We’re not using big slogans, and we’re not overpromising. What we’re talking about is going to be felt on the ground. It’s going to be real.

[4:00 p.m.]

With those remarks, I just want to say that supporting this bill and realizing this opportunity for British Columbia is something that this government has worked on and will continue to work on so that our climate goals are realized and benefits to communities are first and foremost.

E. Ross: On behalf of my constituents of Skeena, I am very pleased to contribute to today’s debate on the Income Tax Act amendments, specifically as it pertains to LNG.

Now, it’s no secret that I have been and continue to support LNG. I first started back in 2004 with the now Chevron project, which is referred to as KM LNG. I also support Cedar LNG, Woodfibre LNG. I also support Pacific Traverse Energy, which wants to ship out propane from Kitimat. So do the majority of British Columbians.

A recent opinion poll revealed the strong support Canadians have for resource development generally. Seventy-nine percent of Canadians and 71 percent of British Columbians support resource development. Seven in ten British Columbians, 70 percent, foresee a positive economic impact from LNG Canada’s liquefied natural gas export project in Kitimat, which is scheduled to deliver its first LNG cargo before mid–next decade.

In my own region, 86 percent of those in northern B.C. anticipate a positive economic impact from the project. Even in Metro Vancouver, 67 percent, an overwhelming majority, support LNG Canada. Furthermore, three in five Canadians, or 60 percent, believe Canada has a responsibility to export natural gas to reduce greenhouse emissions in other countries, like Asia.

All of the benefits that LNG brings to the table are the main reasons I joined the B.C. Liberals, apart from the supportive nature towards a resource economy in general. After years of fighting with and against government, ultimately, it gave me a deeper understanding of the difference between politics and governance. And I think this current government is learning the difference today as well.

It’s reckless to have politics when you’re talking about the future of a country or a province or a region like Skeena if you’re not actually basing it on facts. That is what we saw too much of, especially when you talk about First Nation communities and non–First Nation communities in my region that spent a lot of time addressing some of the very issues that we’re talking about here today.

We’re talking about emissions. We’re talking about carbon. We’re talking about jobs. Well, this is what my band did for 14 years, and continues to do so. That’s what an environmental assessment is for. Underneath that, when the permits come out, you continuously have to keep on top of the emission targets and the standards and the regulations. It’s a never-ending job, and it’s an expensive job.

Not much effort has been put into the capacity that’s already been expended by these First Nations, who had really no clue what they were doing when they first started. The result and what you see today are very efficient and proficient First Nation communities that know how to deal with major projects and all of the issues associated. Because you’re forced to. Under federal standards, environmental assessments, provincial standards, environmental assessments, you’re forced to. If not, you get railroaded.

In terms of the environmental standards that we were talking about today, in terms of LNG Canada and all the other associated projects in Kitimat, at the top of the list, congratulations should be given to the First Nations, not to the governments. I mean, in detail, we had to go over a lot of technical information that we didn’t understand. We were on the ground level. In fact, right now, our communities back home are still dealing with permits that are dealing with environmental issues.

Over the years, when we could see…. I heard this mentioned already today, hope and prosperity. There was a criticism against Christy Clark in 2012 that she used the terms “hope and prosperity.” But these were not empty words. These were real words that were actually brought up back in 2004 in my community, and we tried to spread that along different communities along the pipeline route, because it was real.

[4:05 p.m.]

For the first time, we could see a project that was not speculative in nature. We had real players at the table with real capital backing that had worldwide experience in energy projects. So hope and prosperity was actually a real, achievable goal in our eyes.

We were only happy in 2012 when Christy Clark starting using these words, and we partnered up with the B.C. Liberals. This was not a fun ride in terms of partnering up with the B.C. Liberals. We had a lot of battles. We cooperated a lot. But in the end, we had a common goal: we’ve got to get LNG approved and across the finish line.

It was not a sellout, like what I was hearing over the last ten years. It was not a sellout. We had to fight tooth and nail with the government. If any of you were in that room to see us fighting, you would see what I’m talking about. They were not friendly fights, either. And now the people I was fighting against are my colleagues.

The politics that were played out all over B.C. and all over Canada, in terms of energy projects and LNG, actually helped to stall LNG. You can’t go forward without acknowledging the politics as they played out in this room right here in this House. I’ve said it before. If this House was united in the LNG development five years ago, we could have made that first window of opportunity in getting LNG to Asia.

Instead, the NDP voted unanimously against LNG in 2015. They voted unanimously against the PNW agreement, and they would not distinguish…

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members.

E. Ross: …their argument between PNW in Prince Rupert versus LNG in Kitimat.

Now, as a small community, as a small First Nations band, you can’t know how disheartening this was when you could see the social issues in our community, especially when the groundworks for LNG were starting to address the social issues we were trying to resolve, alongside a major project development on the modernization of the local aluminum smelter. You could see it.

There was no poverty action plan. There was none, because you didn’t need it. The best poverty action plan is a job. You don’t put people out of a job just to prove that your poverty action plan works. That’s not right. That is not right. Come to Kitimat and see all the people that got out of poverty because they’re working on LNG, they’re working on the smelter right now. Ask them which was better: welfare or a job?

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members.

E. Ross: You guys now, talking about how you want to take people out of a job and put them back on welfare to prove your poverty action plan works? That’s what you’re saying.

Interjection.

E. Ross: What are you heckling me for, then?

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members.

E. Ross: You guys voted against LNG. Is that not true?

I’m hearing crickets.

Deputy Speaker: Member, continue.

E. Ross: This is exactly why LNG got stalled, and this is why Kinder Morgan could get stalled: because of the misinformation, the propaganda machines and protests. Even NDPers showed up on protest lines. They signed anti-LNG petitions. I even asked a high-profile NDPer if they would come to Kitimat and actually distinguish between PNW in Prince Rupert and Kitimat. I didn’t see that NDPer for another year. They would not support it, because in principle, they just did not support LNG.

The Hansard record shows this in a debate in 2015 in the summer session. I read those comments. Two weeks of debate. Some of the members are still sitting on that side the House. I heard the member, the Leader of the Green Party, mentioning all the hypocritical statements that were made. I read that in the record. You even read it in the newspapers. You can still google it.

To say that now there’s a turnaround and all those comments are now history…. No, those words meant something back then. They heightened the opposition to LNG. They heightened the misinformation. It heightened the hostilities on the blockades. It emboldened more people to come out and protest and set up blockades.

Interjections.

[4:10 p.m.]

Mr. Speaker: Members, the member has the floor.

E. Ross: You know what? Read the record. For those watching at home, the thousands of people watching at home, there’s a record here called Hansard. It’s video as well as a written record. So read some of the statements, even some of the members who are heckling. I don’t even know where the member is from. Where is he from?

Interjections.

E. Ross: Powell River–Sunshine Coast. Is that right? Heckling like I’m making things up. Read the record. Read some of the statements you guys said in the newspapers. I mean, you guys want to say you were not on the blockade for LNG, and you did not sign anti-LNG petitions. Go check it out.

Interjection.

Deputy Speaker: Member.

E. Ross: The member from Powell River just doesn’t want to believe their own history in terms of their opposition to LNG. It would have been so simple in this House, in 2015, to basically give support in principle to LNG. It would have been so simple. Just like you see what’s happening today. There are votes in favour of LNG. Both sides of the House — except for three members, of course. But because of politics, the NDP refused to do it, even in principle.

I still support LNG. I still do. It is the future of my riding, and it’s the future of B.C. It’s the future of Canada. In fact, I want to continue supporting LNG, but as an MLA, I also have a job do on behalf of my riding, and on behalf of British Columbians, for that matter. The large part of my job down here in Victoria is to hold the government accountable. For that, I will need to see details of the agreement signed between the NDP government and any major project developer as outlined in the legislation.

I do acknowledge the government’s decision to repeal the LNG income tax. But I don’t understand why the NDP government does not want to provide disclosure or transparency to this Legislature, to the people of B.C. I do not understand that. I do not understand why they want to repeal the legislation that forces them to bring agreements in detail to this House in the same manner that the PNW agreement was brought to this House in the summer of 2015. For two weeks, it was debated here. Why do we not do this for the LNG Canada agreement?

I also understand why this LNG income tax was put in, in the first place. It was to ensure that B.C. molecules for natural gas were actually used instead of Alberta natural gas or instead of Saskatchewan natural gas, because in the end, it means revenues. Now if you take away this income tax, I want to know from the government: what is the protection or assurances that B.C. LNG gas molecules will be used for the export to Asia?

In saying that, the repealing of the LNG project development agreement act, which is supposed to provide disclosure…. Taking this act away is actually keeping secrets from the very people this government is supposed to represent. The public doesn’t know that this act, the LNG project development agreement act, was brought in for the best interests of British Columbians, to understand what concessions and benefits government had agreed to with LNG companies. The common citizen doesn’t know that.

It is the number one reason why the PNW agreement in Prince Rupert was brought to this House in the summer session of 2015. It’s a pretty simple ask of this side of the House: can we bring the LNG Canada agreement to this House for debate in the same way? The precedent has been set. There can be a level of consistency if that agreement is brought to this House.

The public should also know that when that PNW agreement was brought to this House for a very open and transparent debate for two weeks, everything was laid on the table. The NDP voted unanimously against LNG because they felt there wasn’t enough value for British Columbians. They also said that the B.C. Liberal government sold the farm, and there wasn’t enough protection for the local workers. That’s what’s in Hansard. That’s on the record.

Now we find out that this government did not put any protections into the current agreement for local workers. Now, this has always been a big issue for Kitimat, Terrace and the surrounding region. It’s an issue for anybody if a major project happens in their region.

[4:15 p.m.]

Why would the government, especially when it complained that there were not enough protections in the PNW agreement, not put protections in themselves? This is hypocritical. Even today, when we’re going back home and talking about the groundworks for LNG Canada and Rio Tinto Alcan that has been in my territory for over 70 years now, the issue of local employment is still an issue. Local procurements for small business, medium-size business. It’s still a big issue. And there’s a lot of different factions in our region that are fighting for it, that are fighting for a voice.

Now, the NDP complained about local procurement and local hiring, but then, when they come up with this agreement, they go silent. So the locals are going to have to just continue to fight on their own with no backing from the government. Hypocrisy at the highest level.

I’ve been here since 2017. I’ve been listening to the politics, and I’ve been listening to the speeches. I actually read the Hansard and the comments made by the NDP. The one comment that always jumps out at me is that the NDP are always pointing out that the B.C. Liberals only look out for the corporate elite, just because of concessions that are made to the business people in B.C.

In this case, in terms of this new deal that the NDP have signed with LNG Canada, the NDP have far surpassed the PNW agreement in terms of looking out for the corporate elite. Far surpassed it — PST, carbon tax, hydro rates. So if the PNW agreement was characterized as being a huge sellout for B.C., under the B.C. Liberals, how do you characterize this agreement, which went above and beyond?

With this agreement that is an even bigger sellout, as stated by our new Energy Minister, who said, “This is the big sellout of British Columbia,” it’s discouraging to know that the position the NDP took on LNG was purely for political motives and were not truly looking out for B.C. as they pretended to be doing.

And I get it. It’s politics. But given their true nature and the importance of LNG to B.C., why did they not consider the impact their statements would have on people like us living up in the north who are trying to revitalize our economies and trying to keep our families at home for work? This is on top of the efforts of First Nations who, for the first time, were equal players at the table with government and industry.

It’s very discouraging to know that the people that were making these comments had no interest in what the people of the north were thinking or feeling at the time and didn’t really care about northern communities like Kitimat or Terrace and what this would mean to us. An economy that was actually celebrating the modernization of an aluminum smelter — that was our claim to fame. That’s what got us out of our stagnant economy.

LNG, over the process of 14 years, was actually starting to become a reality. We could see the light at the end of the tunnel. Then we started to see the opposition to it in 2015, officially, in this House.

I still support LNG, but the details have to be verified. I still believe if there’s a lot of members in this House that are going to vote on this in principle, why wasn’t this principle developed five years ago? That first window of LNG opportunity could have been ours. It could have been B.C.’s. Instead, we turned this over to the United States. We turned it over to Australia, to Qatar. Everybody took advantage of it, because they knew they had to strike while the iron was hot. Not B.C. Just because of the politics and misinformation. Louisiana. Instead, what we had was members of this House helping to shape a misinformed opinion of LNG in B.C.

[4:20 p.m.]

Now, there’s going to be a lot of talk about this deal over the next couple of months in terms of how much of a sellout it was. The project is going to get built. So the only question is: how much of a sellout was it?

Now, the interest-free loan that comes from the PST tax holiday is not a concern to me. It doesn’t bother me if people are calling it a subsidy or not. It does not matter. What does concern me is that similar companies in terms of scale will be asking for the same thing.

Like I said, we’ve got a major aluminum smelter in my territory. They’ll be asking for the same concessions. I’ve got a project there that wants to ship out propane, Pacific Traverse Energy. They want to ship out propane. They’ll be asking for the same incentives. If we’re not talking about a return coming from this one project, how many more projects will actually have the same deal?

I also have an issue with the carbon tax, which will be capped at 30 bucks a tonne. I know there’ll be a comparison to other jurisdictions, but it’s easy enough to compare this jurisdiction to the United States, which does not have a carbon tax, or Australia, which does not have a carbon tax. It will be easy enough to compare to that. So we can almost say that without a doubt there will be no increasing carbon taxes. Like I said, Australia and the United States don’t have a carbon tax.

My ask is whether or not citizens will be provided the same tax reliefs — or other projects, for that matter. In the north, natural gas prices to heat our homes are through the roof, and on April 1, the carbon tax is going to go up. On natural gas to heat our homes, it costs more for the taxes than it actually costs for the natural gas itself, and there’s no relief in sight for these homeowners, just to heat their homes. We’re not even talking about the people that use trucks, cars, skidoos, boats. The price is just going to keep going up. For a community like mine, when the price of gas goes up, everything else goes up because the cost to ship goods continues to go up as well. It’s going to go up.

Let’s say the $30 carbon tax…. How will that be applied to everybody else to make it fair? Why will it not be applied to everybody else? Now, whether these concessions are a subsidy or not — the hydro rate, whether it’s a subsidy or not — doesn’t concern me. But if the NDP were so concerned about these issues, they had the opportunity to offer this up as an amendment back in 2015 on the PNW agreement. They could have amended what was put in front of them after debate, but we had to wait till 2019 to see it.

In closing, the B.C. NDP made huge mistakes clerically when they actually condemned LNG without looking at facts, without looking at the interest of British Columbians and especially without looking at the interests of communities like mine up in Skeena, Kitimat, Terrace, Nisga’a. I would dare say, though, that they’re making the same mistake in terms of Kinder Morgan, but it’s not too late. You could still retract and amend those comments because in five, ten years’ time, I can almost see the day where exactly the same conversation is going to take place.

A. Olsen: I want to use my time here speaking to Bill 10, the Income Tax Amendment Act, to expand on the comments that I made while addressing my colleague’s amendment. The legislation in front of us is only a small piece of the overall framework that this government has brought forward to entice LNG to British Columbia. I know that this government will speak to the complexity of the investment decision, the carefully constructed economic models — which, by the way, only have revenue and are lacking the other side of it — the carefully constructed economic models and forecasting that is done for the price of natural gas years from now.

[4:25 p.m.]

Let’s be very clear about what’s actually in front of us in this House today. The previous government threw everything they could into the financial package for LNG companies, in the hopes of attracting investment. None would come. Despite what the member opposite was going on about, the reality is that the former government on the other side did everything they could, while having a majority, and they were not able to get one LNG facility landed into our province.

You see, it turns out we are very good at knowing all the different technological and geopolitical factors that go into estimating the price of natural gas. I think my colleague who spoke formerly has gone to considerable effort to highlight just how vehement the current members of government, the B.C. NDP, were in opposition. They highlighted their concerns with how the former members across the way were “giving our resource away” — just giving it away. They spoke time and time again.

Yet if we turn to the legislation in front of us, the one that we’re debating today, we have a small piece of the broader fiscal package that this government has now brought forward and that actually weakens the regime that the former B.C. Liberal government advanced. We have an astonishing example of corporate welfare being delivered to us in a package called Bill 10. The current government has provided a further $6 billion in tax relief to this industry.

Let’s review. When the former B.C. Liberal government was in play, the then opposition B.C. NDP called their package “giving the resource away.” Now when the B.C. NDP government is in power, they are further advancing the corporate welfare package by $6 billion. We heard the Minister of Energy and Mines going on and on about how excited she is for all of the investments that can be made because this project is coming to British Columbia. I have to ask: what more could we do with the $6 billion that this government has further given away? We’re not talking about that, though, are we?

I understand the great difficulty and challenge that government has in trying to construct these regimes. They’re complex; I will give them that. But looking at the timing of this LNG program, 2023 to 2043, my children will be retired. My grandchildren will see the end of this project, if I’m lucky enough to have grandchildren. So this project is an inheritance for our grandchildren.

[J. Isaacs in the chair.]

What I don’t understand is why, at this moment in time, when we see children around the world rising up to call on governments to act on climate change, our government is constructing complicated tax regimes to further underwrite major fossil fuel expansion in British Columbia. It makes absolutely no sense.

Why is this same energy, this same dogged determination, not being squarely pointed at the opportunity that we have in British Columbia to leverage our strengths and build a sustainable and innovative economy? Why is it not the opportunity that governments scramble all over each other to put forward — the most cost-effective, the most bold approach to deliver? Instead, we’re climbing over top of each other in this place in a race to the bottom. This government, like the former government, has its priorities backwards.

[4:30 p.m.]

My children inspire me. I watch them grow and learn from their curiosity. They’re beautiful and unblemished in their thoughts and actions. It’s why the climate marches that took place just a short few weeks ago had such an effect on all of us. Watching kids as young as eight and nine years old, as well as students in middle school and high school, rallying together….

It’s truly historic, seeing signs that say, “We should be preparing for the future, not fighting for it,” or: “The climate is changing, why aren’t we?” These messages should be tragic messages to the adults that should be making mature decisions in this place, not only about today but for future generations as well, the future of our children and our grandchildren.

If in fact you don’t have children or grandchildren, your nieces and nephews, the children and grandchildren of your friends and family also should matter. We should not be allowed to disassociate ourselves from the future simply because we don’t have the children to look to.

We have a responsibility as leaders to respond to this call of our youth, not by patting them on their heads but with real action. We are the ones who can set our province on a path that shows them that we actually care about the problems that they are inheriting from the decisions that we are making in this place. We have the solutions right in front of us. CleanBC offers one such vision that, if followed, could chart a bold path for our province.

While this work might be difficult, the choice isn’t complicated. The kids get it, and it’s really quite simple. We need to fully commit to building a sustainable low-carbon economy. It’s the only one that will offer the next generation the opportunities that they need to have healthy and fulfilling lives.

As my colleague from Cowichan Valley has said: “It’s the vision that gives our communities a real pathway to prosperity.” I ask my colleagues in the B.C. NDP who do not support the subsidization of climate change to stand up and be accounted for. Our children need to know that we — their elected leaders, the people that many of them voted for in the school vote — won’t continue to do the things that we fundamentally disagree with.

I know that not all of you agree with selling out our future generations. I know that there are many people in this House that are concerned with the information that they have been told about this LNG program, that there are concerns that the dog whistles have replaced facts, that the balance sheet should include both the revenue and the expenditures and that you have not seen the whole picture just by looking at the potential forecast revenue or been wooed by the tens of billions of dollars — the emphasis so heavy on the “b” you can’t miss it.

But what about the expenses side of that balance sheet? Have you asked those questions? What will runaway climate change cost us? Let’s just ponder that for a second. Is it the $43 billion that’s forecast in revenue over the next 20 years? Will that cover runaway climate change — the cost of wildfires, the cost of diking against sea level rise? Do we recognize that the entire estuary of the Fraser River will need to be diked? Do we know the billions of dollars that that’s going to cost? Is there anybody in this government right now that’s looking at the cost, that’s building the plan? What about the Cowichan River? Are we looking at the protection of that estuary? The Skeena, the Nass?

Interjection.

A. Olsen: The money? The money is coming from plenty of other industries that this government should be chasing — not LNG, not being sucked into the black hole of $43 billion while subsidizing climate change. There are plenty of other more creative options than just grabbing the one that was dangling in front of us because it was uncompleted work from the former government. That is not good enough.

[4:35 p.m.]

Our children need to know that we, their elected leaders, are going to stand up for them. What liability are we leaving our children — my children, your children, your grandchildren? This is our time to stand up and be accounted for. I know that our hearts and our minds are heavy with this burden in this place, the burden that the member raised: how do we pay for this? It’s a burden that we all carry. It’s one that we can relieve ourselves of by not subsidizing the problem that’s creating the huge expenses that our children are going to have to find the solutions for.

Our children want to know that their leaders are inspired by their hope. They need to see that their action is having an impact on the decisions that are being made in this room. Our children need to trust that their leaders will make the right decision, not the politically advantageous decision.

This is not about political gain. It’s about the future of this province, and it’s about the future of our family members. Let’s show them that they can trust their leaders. They have now seen members of this government actively campaign against something and then capitulate. I think once can be understood; twice is a pattern — a dangerous pattern.

No, I will not be complicit in taxpayer-funded giveaways that help support a large fossil fuel industry in this province. I will not help the NDP implement an LNG regime. I am choosing to stand with my children and those around the world that are demanding a different pathway and a different future. I am not going to be part of any further subsidization of climate change in this province.

With that, I want to move an amendment. I move:

[That the motion for second reading of Bill (No. 10) intituled Income Tax Amendment Act, 2019 be amended by deleting the word “now” and substituting “six months hence.”]

On the amendment.

A. Olsen: I want to stand and speak in support of my amendment. It would be kind of crazy if I didn’t, but anyway.

I think that it’s important that we recognize that the bill that we have in front of us came earlier this week. I don’t know if the opportunity has been there for people to fully understand the impact that this is going to have in our province.

M. Bernier: My apologies. I seek leave to make an introduction.

Leave granted.

Introductions by Members

M. Bernier: My apologies for interrupting what might be a riveting speech. I thought I wanted to take the opportunity — seeing him in the gallery — to introduce to the House Mayor Germuth, who’s actually here visiting us today. As most people will know, he is the mayor of Kitimat, which is going to be ground zero for LNG projects. Will the House please make His Worship welcome to the House.

[4:40 p.m.]

Debate Continued

A. Olsen: I thank the member from one of the Peace Rivers for giving me a little break. I note that the other Peace River will be standing up very shortly here to speak.

And welcome to Your Worship the mayor.

I think it’s important that when we’re voting on this package, this subsidization of this industry, we understand and have the time to fully understand the implications that this has. I think it’s much easier for government to put out and to dangle and to emphasize the billions, but it’s much, much more difficult for us to really take the time to understand the impact that this decision is going to have.

Indeed, this is one of the challenges that we have with climate change. Of course, it happens very slowly and over time. We in this place can trick ourselves into believing that the decisions that we’re making in these Houses, in these chambers, are not having any real impact on what’s going on out there. Yet the severity of the storms that hit my riding this winter are unlike they’ve ever been.

We were in the Nicola Valley. The chiefs there were telling us that, indeed, they had a 1,000-year flood, and then the very next year they had a 500-year flood. The Chief looked — and it’s a joke that’s often made — and he said, “I think that I’ve probably got the least best luck of any chief,” because he has faced the two most severe floods that his community has faced.

These costs that are being handed to these communities are not sustainable. Their ability to handle these costs is overwhelming the resources that the First Nations communities throughout the province — and, indeed, the small communities in the province — have.

Who is accounting for that? Are we taking the time to actually think this through? Are we taking the time to actually ask the questions of those that are putting the documents in front of us and telling us this is a good thing? Are we asking them: how are we accounting for the other side of that balance sheet? Frankly, I don’t think that we are.

I haven’t seen that. All I have seen is it dangled in front of us that, in fact, we’re going to be able to generate these billions of dollars from this industry. It’s a quick and easy route to generate money without thinking through the impact that this is going to have.

I move this amendment, to substitute the word “now” with “six months hence,” to give this House an opportunity to truly think through the implications that this is going to have; to truly think and to consider the decision that’s about to be made, the corporate welfare package that’s being handed to this company to subsidize climate change; the impacts that our children and grandchildren and the future generations are going to inherit from this decision. That it’s not just dropped in front of us, debated very quickly at a very high level. Everyone comes in here and votes; people coming in here and asking: “What are we voting on?”

I think it’s important that we take the time to work this through. I know everybody is in a big hurry because the LNG company said, “If you don’t do this, we have to walk” — or whatever the threat is. The reality is that they’ve already got us over the barrel on this deal. It’s a powder keg, and it’s about to explode on us.

I think that it would be prudent for us to really take the time to think through the decisions that it appears that 80 — whatever the number is, 84 or 83 — are willing to stand up and make without asking any questions or having the time to think this through.

A. Weaver: It gives me great pleasure to rise and stand in support of the hoist motion brought forward by my colleague from Saanich North and the Islands.

[4:45 p.m.]

Let me start by saying this government claimed that it had four conditions that needed to be met prior to it supporting natural gas. Now, when I spoke at second reading, I pointed out how it was somewhat ironic that this government criticized former Premier Christy Clark for having five conditions with respect to Trans Mountain. They criticized her, and rightfully so, by pointing out that there were never any metrics against which those five conditions were judged, so those five conditions were met magically because the former Premier just said so, without saying why they were met.

Well, here we have a situation where this government has now got four conditions, very proud of those four conditions: fair return, jobs and training for B.C. workers, respect and partnership with Indigenous communities and meeting climate commitments. The point raised by my friend here from Saanich North and the Islands is that we need an additional six months’ time, and as I outlined earlier, the reason and rationale for that is directly embedded within the four commitments of this government.

Meet climate commitments. There is no way right now that this government can say that this project meets climate commitments. It doesn’t — period.

CleanBC, for which government deserves credit, articulates a pathway only towards three-quarters of the emissions reduction target by 2040. There is a gap of six megatonnes, 25 percent, that still needs to be found. Three and a half, or closer to four, megatonnes of that would be found right away if LNG Canada did not go forward. To claim that the condition has been met about meeting climate commitments is false. Therefore, the government’s fourth condition has not been met — period — today.

As such, I expect and hope that those members in government who claim to have some concern over the climate issue would actually see this amendment for what it is. It’s giving government opportunity, the time to reflect upon what is required in that further 25 percent. How are we going to get those six megatonnes? That’s a lot of megatonnes, given that the entire province of British Columbia only puts out around 64 megatonnes annually.

We have found in CleanBC a pathway to reduce emissions by three-quarters of the 40 percent reduction relative to 2007 levels that are required by 2030. But that 25 percent, six megatonnes, or 10 percent of the total of B.C. emissions, has yet to be found.

Even in the pathway that’s been articulated, it is but a pathway. There are some, but very few, measures that have got rolling. The methane regulations — we’re still awaiting those. Some of the statements with respect to building codes — we’re still getting some of those. Some of the industrial activity changes — we’re still getting those. There is no way in a million months of Sundays that this government can stand up with any credibility and say that we have met our climate commitments if we pass this bill. Just false.

Respect and partnerships is a third condition of the government. Now, we know — I needn’t go on about the Wet’suwet’en and the Unist’ot’en Camp — that there clearly are still issues with respect to respect and partnership. I need not go much farther to the west, but when you go to the Site C region, we clearly have more issues with respect to Indigenous respect, partnerships and truth and reconciliation.

Again, government claims that that box has been ticked, but I would argue that it hasn’t. This is why, again, the motion brought forward by my colleague here is perfectly reasonable and ultimately supportable in light of the fact it would give government six months more to actually get to deal with some of the truth and reconciliations with the Wet’suwet’en and, in particular, the Treaty 8 Nations around the Peace River area.

Jobs and training. We’ve heard government say: “Okay, that box has been met.” But it hasn’t. We’ve heard nothing about it. I know from personal experience. I’ve had a friend, literally from Victoria, who worked on the Boskalis dredge but not for very long. There are lots of stories about the hiring practices going on in that area. The fact that Boskalis is not a Canadian company. It’s a Dutch company. The fact that Boskalis has contracted a Newfoundland company to find the employees to work on the Boskalis dredging camps. Guess where they’re coming from. B.C.? No. Everywhere else in the world but not B.C. So we have a problem there with respect to that as well.

On top of that, we have the fair return. Now, this is where it gives me enormous pleasure to read a few quotes about the so-called fair return, and I will underpin that with some direct statements by members of the government as to what exactly that means.

[4:50 p.m.]

I’ve tried to argue…. In particular, I highlight it with the resignation letter of an employee within the Ministry of Energy and Mines, which essentially points out…. If I could, without re-reading the entire letter into the record again. I should say that, you know…. The summary says: “In my opinion, a much closer look should be taken at any cross-jurisdictional, royalty-competitive comparisons, as B.C.’s current gas royalty figures include revenues from gas, liquids and field condensate, which is dissimilar from other prov­inces, such as Alberta.”

Again, the six months requested by my colleague in this hoist motion would allow government time to actually explore that.

In addition, there are other questions with respect to the deep-well royalty credit, which, as I’ve articulated and outlined, is essentially a great generational giveaway, which was initially brought in place to incentivize deep drilling and now is applied to 99 percent of all drilling. Basically, anybody who’s drilling anywhere gets a credit. Again, this royalty structure has not changed since 2005, except for the expansion of the drill credits.

Again, it’s pretty clear to me that we’re not getting a fair return. And it’s even worse than that. Not only are we not getting a fair return, we’re not getting a return — period. And we are subsidizing an industry to come in, and the ratepayer has to build Site C to deliver the electricity that we’re going to lose 50 percent of the construction costs of every time we sell it.

Every kilowatt hour of electricity sold to LNG Canada from Site C is going to lose the British Columbia ratepayer something like five cents per kilowatt hour. That means that you and I are going to necessarily increase our hydro rates to pay for this promise by the B.C. NDP, which is being done only, as far as I can tell, to do what Christy Clark couldn’t. The economic rationale simply doesn’t fly. If it did, we’d have companies clamouring to come to B.C. But no, they’re not.

What we have is LNG Canada, a global multinational with very clever negotiators who saw a change in government and thought: “Ha, lambs to the slaughter. Here come our negotiators.”

The deer stuck in headlights walk in and say: “What can we give you? We want to deliver what Christy Clark couldn’t. We know we’ve got a litany of quotes a mile long about how we’re hurling abuse at them, but we really want to deliver. What can we do?”

LNG Canada says: “This is great. We’ve got them now. Okay, eliminate the PST on construction.” “Okay, sure.” “We need the steel tax tariff removed as well.” “Okay, sure.” “We don’t want to pay the carbon tax. Every other British Columbian should.” “Okay, sure. But you have to be the cleanest in the world.” “Oh, we will be. Oh, but we’re not anymore, so we better redefine what ‘clean’ is.” So now you can use natural gas in the compression but clean….

“We’re going to pretend that that Louisiana export facility doesn’t exist so we can still get an exemption. Of course, we wouldn’t want to have to use electricity in the compression because that’s costly, so we’ll use natural gas. But we know that we can get that NDP, because we know they’re not thinking this through. So we’re going keep that royalty rates regime in place for the upstream natural gas, and we’re going to use natural gas in the compression. Bingo. Suckers. We got natural gas we’re going to use for free, that we’re going to pay no one for, so we can compress our natural gas and sell it.”

I mean, we are literally dealing, frankly, with negotiations that are embarrassing. It’s embarrassing to think that somehow we got a good deal here. And the member for Skeena stood up and had the gall to complain about natural gas prices. If he thought this through for one second, he would realize that what happened in Australia is going to happen in B.C.

When Australia developed its LNG industry, the domestic price for Australian natural gas went through the roof. And that is exactly what’s going to happen in B.C. So while we might be thinking about affordability, as soon as you create a massive demand for a resource that we’re not claiming any royalties on because we’ve given that all away, you know that we’re going to have to compete for our own domestic supply for that same resource. And prices are going to go up.

Good thinking, NDP. Really good thinking about the long-term prosperity of this province.

Coming to these quotes, let’s take a look at what the Premier had to say. It’s the Premier of our province who, when in opposition and during the estimates for the Office of the Premier, asked a number of questions.

[4:55 p.m.]

He was asking questions of Christy Clark, who was the Premier at the time. He said this:

“The question I hear wherever I travel…. In the Interior, on the Island, in Vancouver, what I hear is this: is this government selling the store? Are they giving away these resources without getting a return back to the people who own those resources? Sadly, when you look at the information that’s made available to us…. It’s infrequent that we get complete stories from the B.C. Liberals.

“We’re not getting access to project development agreements. We’re not going to be able to take a look at those. I’m fairly confident that Petronas has been well taken care of in these documents, but I have no understanding or no ability to understand whether or not job protection is there for British Columbians, whether the resource will get a fair return to those who own it, the people of British Columbia.

“We’ll see…later on. ‘We’re cutting deals,’ says the Premier, ‘and we’ll let you see it when we’re done.’”

Ironic. We still do not see those deals. We’re trying to, with this bill, repeal the project development agreement that Petronas was given. I don’t see government bringing forward an agreement with LNG Canada that this House is able to debate. I don’t see that happening. If anything, transparency is going the other way. We’re becoming less transparent from where we were with the B.C. Liberals.

In terms of the statement, “what people are telling me is: are we giving away the store?” well, as I mentioned earlier at second reading speech, the proposal by the B.C. NDP is to take the B.C. Liberal giveaway and to put it on steroids — to actually to take their LNG Income Tax Act, an act that would have brought B.C. some revenue when the companies were making money, and say, “You know what? Let’s just eliminate that,” but ironically, bringing in the credit that was embedded within that.

Talk about unbelievable. Not only are the NDP wanting to eliminate the LNG Income Tax Act; they want to retain the credit that was embedded in that in a hope that maybe a few head offices will get set up here — wishful thinking.

This is what else the Premier had to say. This is all so very relevant as to why we need to give a bit more time, because I don’t think that the Premier and his party have thought this through. They haven’t reflected upon the comments they made historically and on the rationale for those arguments — what’s fundamentally underpinning why they put them forward — and they don’t see how they apply now more than ever.

He said this:

“…we need to have an open discussion about the value of our resources and who we’re trying to benefit most.” Very salient words. “…we need to have an open discussion about the value of our resources and who we’re trying to benefit most. Because the government overpromised on LNG, my fear and the fear of many British Columbians is that the secret agreements that are being negotiated right now are going to be giving away that resource.”

Well, my, my, isn’t that ironic. The secret agreements being negotiated right now are going to be giving away that resource. Well, we saw, in the end, what the B.C. Liberals proposed. We saw that. The NDP hurled abuse at them when they brought it forward, just vitriol. The level of vitriol that was emanating from that side at the time across the aisle was remarkable.

Interjection.

A. Weaver: I’ve been consistent. The member for Powell River–Sunshine Coast suggests it wasn’t me. I’ve been consistent on this file since day one, since 2012. I’ve stood up and said it was not economic in 2012.

Interjection.

A. Weaver: To the member for Powell River–Sunshine Coast, I wonder if he can look himself in the mirror tonight when he stands up and votes against these amendments, knowing that he somehow thinks that he stands for climate change mitigation.

This is a difficult…. I realize you’re chirpy because this is a difficult decision for you. But I would suggest that perhaps you might reflect internally a little more on the decision that you have to make shortly, rather than chirping because you don’t agree with what’s being said. Because what’s being said now is the truth.

The truth of the matter is this: the NDP were against the LNG Income Tax Act. They were against it because they felt it was a giveaway. They felt that the B.C. Liberals were not doing due diligence and were giving away our resource. Those are the words of the Premier. He said this: “Because the government overpromised on LNG, my fear and the fear of many British Columbians is that the secret agreements that are being negotiated right now are going to be giving away that resource.”

What are the secret agreements that the B.C. NDP negotiated? They not only eliminated the income tax but actually kept in the royalty, exempted the PST on construction, eliminated the steel tariff, exempted LNG Canada from increases in the carbon tax and agreed to give them Site C electricity that the ratepayer is going to pay 10 to 15 cents a kilowatt hour for and sell it to them at 5.4 cents a kilowatt hour. So you and I are each going to each pay and lose five-plus cents for every kilowatt hour of electricity that LNG Canada uses.

[5:00 p.m.]

They’re not required to use electricity in the compression. They’re not required. We’ve given them the upstream natural gas for, essentially, free compression. Hats off to LNG Canada negotiators. They really were dealing with a bunch of suckers, I tell you. They came out of this with the sweetest of sweet deals. It is embarrassing. I don’t know who was on the B.C. NDP negotiating team, but it’s embarrassing.

Going back to the Premier’s comments:

“Because the government overpromised on LNG, my fear and the fear of many British Columbians is that the secret agreements that are being negotiated right now are going to be giving away that resource.”

The Premier continues:

“We’re going to be tying the hands of future governments. When commodity prices do go up, which they usually always do, we — the people of B.C., the owners of that resource — will not be able to benefit from that because we’re locked into agreements that were signed by a desperate government trying to make one promise….”

Say that again: “The people of B.C., the owners of that resource, will not be able to benefit from that because we’re locked into agreements that were signed by a desperate government trying to make one promise.” Now, that was the Premier talking to the Liberals in 2015.

As I articulated, while he was very concerned that the owners of the resource, the B.C.’ers, were not going to get royalties, now we’ve taken that to a whole new level. Oh, how the chicken comes home to roost.

Secondly, the Premier also said: “The challenge, then, is: are we putting in place a royalty regime that does not meet the needs of a growing economy, does not meet the needs of a resource that will go up in value? The benefit of that will be realized by the company and not by the owners of the resource.” Nothing, nothing has changed. The benefit will be realized by the company and not by the owners of that resource. Those are the Premier’s words.

The Premier was also very critical of the prosperity fund and other promises that were attached, along with the promises of wealth and prosperity for one and all. This is what he said here too: “Instead, there’s an agreement that gives money to the company, that gives tax breaks to the company and gives royalty concessions to the company. Good deal for Petronas, not such a good deal for the people of British Columbia. Promise made; promise broken.”

Those were the words of our Premier on July 13, 2015, in discussion of the LNG project development agreement that this government wanted to repeal. He said this: “Instead, there’s an agreement that gives money to the company, that gives tax breaks to the company and gives royalty concessions to the company. Good deal for Petronas, not such a good deal for the people of B.C. Promise made; promise broken.”

The fact that this is on record, and the fact that we’re now debating the LNG Income Tax Act, which my colleague has so wisely suggested be kicked down the can for six months so that we could actually reflect upon this, is critical, because we need to understand what on earth the Premier was thinking.

If he was thinking that back in 2015, the LNG agreement signed by this government with Petronas was giving money to the company, giving them tax breaks and giving royalty concessions to the company…. If he truly believed that — which was a promise made, promise broken; a good deal for Petronas, a bad deal for people of B.C. — how can he stand before this House, before the people of British Columbia, and say what we’re bringing forward with LNG Canada is a good deal for British Columbians?

There simply is no credibility to that statement because what is being brought forward in terms of the LNG Canada deal takes the deal that the B.C. NDP had with Petronas to an entirely new level: exemptions of steel tariffs, exemption of PST in construction, elimination of the LNG Income Tax Act but retention of the royalty credit — essentially, electricity at the industrial rate, even though you didn’t have to use electricity in the compression.

[5:05 p.m.]

“On top of that, we’ll exempt you from the carbon tax because you’re going to be the cleanest in the world” — if we redefine what clean is and forget about the fact that there actually is electric compression in an LNG facility in Louisiana. Remarkable.

The Premier was also very critical of LNG emissions. Trying to reconcile his statements on that with respect to the present bill requires further reflection and delay, which is why my colleague has brought that amendment forward. This is what the Premier said:

“What is the result of all of the efforts of all of us in this House and all of the citizens of British Columbia, by reducing their personal footprint? The government allows a company from Malaysia to come and increase our overall emissions by 8½ percent. That’s massive, absolutely massive. So all of you out there who are doing your best, who are buying into the notion that if we all work together, we can get out of the morass that industrialization has brought upon this planet, all of us who want to work together to address the challenge of our generation…. One project that the ragtag people say is going to have an impact were the forces of no.”

Again, everything the Premier said with respect to Petronas applies to LNG Canada but on a higher scale. An 8½ percent increase of emissions? LNG Canada got an environmental assessment approval for four trains. That’s essentially nine gigatonnes, which is a 15 percent increase of emissions. All of this seems to be lost upon the Premier.

What about the Deputy Premier? Maybe the Deputy Premier, because she led the NDP at a time that they ran an Axe the Tax campaign in the 2009 election. One might be somewhat cynical and think that perhaps she’s not very supportive of the climate plan, but then again, she did fund CleanBC in the budget. You never quite know.

Let’s get a sense of what her comments were, get a sense of what she believed when the Liberals were in power. Again, coming to 2015, back in July, we’re debating the project development agreements act. This is what the Deputy Premier said: “In other words, there will be no future climate change action in the area of LNG without a cost, without a huge cost, to the company. The agreement says that specifically. It says it specifically. It’s unbelievable. One of the biggest issues facing us, the issue of climate change….”

Clearly, the Deputy Premier believes that climate change is one of the biggest issues facing us. She says this:

“One of the biggest issues facing us, the issue of climate change, and the Premier says” — that would be Christy Clark — “‘Don’t worry. There will be no changes to do with climate change.’ There will be no new regulations. There will be no new requirements over 25 years when it comes to the LNG industry. Unbelievable. No future discussion around greenhouse gas emissions with the industry. No future discussion about the costs of offsets or future targets or additional changes that may occur in 25 years. We don’t expect any kind of change when it comes to climate change and the industry for 25 years? Extraordinary.”

The Deputy Premier, in 2015, is expressing the same frustration as the Premier, as the now Energy Minister, as a number of other members.

My colleague here has noted some of these inconsistencies and suggested that a six-month hoist is in order, to ensure that we come to grips with some of these inconsistencies, so that we can better articulate how this proposal before us today actually fits in with the climate plan, for which we’ve only identified 75 percent of the direction towards the end.

It further says this. She was very critical about LNG being given away for nothing. This is what the Deputy Premier said. This is her bill today.

“They want,” they being the people of British Columbia, “to see plans that move economic growth along and do it in an environmentally sound way. They want to make sure that although this province is built on resource development, it does it in a way that protects our land and air and water and fisheries. That’s what the people of this province care about. They don’t want our resources given away for nothing. They want a fair return. They want a fair share, and they want a fair share for current and future generations.”

These are the words of the present Deputy Premier when referring, in 2015, to the debate on the LNG project development agreement with respect to Petronas.

[5:10 p.m.]

Again, “They,” they being the people of British Columbia, “don’t want our resources given away for nothing. They want a fair return. They want a fair share, and they want a fair share for current and future generations. They don’t want to pit the economy against the environment, the environment against the economy, and that’s exactly what this bill does,” she said, referring to the B.C. Liberals. “That’s exactly what this bill does.”

The hypocrisy that we today are debating…. We’re debating an amendment to give us six more months’ time to reflect upon this. But we’re debating an amendment on a bill that actually takes the Petronas project development agreement to a whole new level. All these words about not wanting resources to be given away, wanting a fair return, not wanting to sacrifice future generations — all of this applies. Yet the hypocrisy of what is before us is that it’s now the B.C. NDP putting this forward — the B.C. NDP, those who campaigned to be there for British Columbians, concerned about climate change, concerned about future generations.

There is not a single member of the B.C. NDP who tonight can go home, look at the mirror or look at their children and say anything other than: “I betrayed you today because I voted against your future. I voted to give away a resource that we could have actually protected and preserved. Instead of sending our province on a path for economic prosperity and a diversified 21st century economy, I hijacked your future by building Site C and ensuring that your hydro rates are going up to subsidize this by exempting this company from the carbon tax.”

You go and do your stuff to reduce emissions, but it doesn’t matter at all because the signal we’re sending is LNG Canada can add four megatonnes right away, and when they put the four trains in, it’ll be eight megatonnes. Eight megatonnes is 15 percent of all of British Columbia’s emissions as of today.

This is not a climate plan. This is why we need those additional six months. We need to justify this pathway with the fact that we’ve only identified 75 percent of our target. There is nothing right now on the books that will take us to 100 percent of the way.

Interjection.

A. Weaver: Sorry, hon. Speaker. My colleague and I have to coordinate because we are but three in our caucus. When there are committees on, I have a colleague who….

I will be designated, on this particular….. I just noticed the green light went up. I know my colleagues would like to hear more of my quotes here.

The difficulty we have is coordinating someone who’s in a committee at the same time. She will be speaking to this amendment, and I must give my colleague a few minutes of notice, to give her some notice.

There’s some more criticism. These are important too. You know, I’ve got a ton of comments from MLAs to bring forward. But these are instrumental, key figures in the present government: the Premier and the Deputy Premier, who’s the Finance Minister. This is what she also said: “We have an opportunity here to stand in this Legislature and talk about local benefits; to talk about support for education; to talk about support for a diverse, value-added modern economy; to talk about investments in people, which are our greatest resource.”

I agree 100 percent with those sentiments, and we’ve been doing a lot of that in collaboration with the B.C. NDP. But this is what she further says: “…not to talk about a giveaway to simply meet the Premier’s political agenda, which is what we’re talking about right now.”

Frankly, those words also apply today, except the agenda is to try to deliver what Christy Clark couldn’t. That’s essentially it. That is the driver for this deal. “Oh, we can deliver what Christy Clark couldn’t. Aren’t we good? Let us give away the farm and hope nobody pays any attention to it.”

Then, perhaps the best quotes of all. There are two here. These are from April 15, 2015, both of them, in response to the Liquefied Natural Gas Income Tax Amendment Act, an act that the NDP voted against, as I articulated in more detail at second reading. I voted for this amendment because, unbeknownst to any rational thinking in my mind, the B.C. NDP voted in support of the LNG income tax act in the fall of 2014. I voted against it. I was the only one here. That act passed. It had loopholes in it. It had problems with it.

The Liberals brought in an amendment act in the spring to close a lot of those loopholes and tighten up the legislation. Obviously, bad public policy is on the books. The amendment act came forward. I voted for the amendment act. I remember speaking to the then Finance Minister, saying: “How could you not vote for it? I didn’t like the act to begin with, but it is bad, and you’re making it better.” But this where…. Explain the rationale; I don’t know. NDP voted against making it better. But they did.

[5:15 p.m.]

In that speech, the now Deputy Premier said this:

“Given this government’s direction and this government’s record around LNG and LNG commitments, I have to say that this is an incredibly troubling direction. To think that you could take a tax credit and decide that we’ll just up it…. We want to give industry a little bit bigger tax credit. We won’t take that to the Legislature to be debated. We won’t let the public know ahead of time that that’s a direction we’re looking at. We’ll just do that by regulation. We’ll sit in the cabinet room, we’ll decide that by regulation, and then we’ll publish that regulation later.”

Well, let’s have a conversation about some of these things that are happening by regulation. Exemption of PST. Exemption of PST in the construction. Did we debate that here? No, it happened in regulation. What about exempting LNG Canada from increases in the carbon tax? No, happening in regulation. What about exempting LNG from the requirement of having to use electricity in the compression to get the industrial rate? No, we’re going to do that through regulation. What about royalty regime changes? No, we’re going to do that through regulation.

Again, yet another remarkable example of pot, meet kettle, and please don’t call each other black. This is just something that you cannot make up, even if you wanted to. The hypocrisy is just mind-boggling.

She also said this:

“I worry that this is exactly what we’re seeing with this government in this bill and in their direction around LNG — is in fact a sell-off of an asset in hopes of seeing some part of industry come forward to be able to invest in our province. It’s not a direction that I support. It’s not a direction that we on this side of the House support. And it’s not a direction that the public supports, most importantly….

“They would also say that these resources belong to British Columbians. To give them away without fair value…for British Columbians, to give them away without jobs for British Columbians, and to do all of that with a cone of secrecy is the wrong direction for our province to go. It’s the wrong direction for a government to go.”

Wow. It’s all I can say. Wow. Let me read that again. I want to read it again because it’s important that this sinks in, to those B.C. NDP backbench MLAs who are going to vote for this — those NDP MLAs who have the gall and the audacity to tell their constituents that they’re champions of climate change, the gall and audacity to stand with the children on the steps of the B.C. Legislature and say: “We are here for you as you protest.”

Across the world, millions of these students stay away from school on Fridays, pleading with their leaders to take action on climate change. Let me read that again.

Interjection.

A. Weaver: Oh my. It’s been a long day. Let me read that again. Hansard might want to just put “Interjection” in there, instead of explaining the interjection.

With respect, Hansard, “Interjection,” please.

Interjections.

A. Weaver: What was that? We got the nod from Hansard. Thank you. Interjection. That’s awesome.

Let’s do this one more time, because it’s important to read this again, and it’s important to read it slowly and articulate each syllable.

“I worry that this is exactly what we’re seeing with this government in this bill and in their direction around LNG — is in fact a sell-off of an asset in hopes of seeing some part of industry come forward to be able to invest in our province. It’s not a direction that I support. It’s not a direction that we on this side of the House support. And it’s not a direction that the public supports, most importantly….

“They would also say that these resources belong to British Columbians. To give them away without fair value…for British Columbians, to give them away without jobs for British Columbians, and to do all of that with a cone of secrecy is the wrong direction for our province to go. It’s the wrong direction for a government to go.”

I say wow again. We’re not debating the LNG project development agreement.

At least, whether you like it or not…. I clearly voted against it. I did not like it, but at least we got a chance to debate the Petronas development agreement when the Liberals were in. I was pretty miffed that I had to move my summer holidays and come back on July 15 to do it, with two weeks’ notice, but we did it. At least we had that opportunity.

[5:20 p.m.]

Here the remarkable aspect of this is that much of this, despite the fact that the now Deputy Premier said we shouldn’t be doing this, has been done through order-in-council — most of the giveaway. We’re left with a couple of things. Repealing the LNG Income Tax Act, essentially repealing the act that allowed the province to earn some money…. They basically said, “You can have it. We don’t want any money,” because LNG Canada clearly walked in the room and said: “We’re not giving you any money for this. This is part of a giveaway. Just give it to us.” The NDP said: “Okay.”

That’s presumably what happened, because we have no Income Tax Act now, but they want to retain that tax credit — all done through this bill. Remarkably, as well, we are claiming to be climate leaders, which is why the delay of six months is very important to actually give us some time to reflect upon this.

I’d like to come to a dear friend, one of the MLAs in this chamber that I respect above most — high integrity, very thoughtful, a commanding presence when he speaks — that’s the member for Vancouver–West End. Let me tell what you he had to say.

This is what he said in the debate in July about an alternate path that’s required. He said this:

“We need to be moving to a cleaner path, a greener path, a more healthy path that actually recognizes climate change impacts today, in the future and distant future, because it’s going to get worse. It could be way worse, or it could be bad. This government has decided to go with way worse.” That’s referring to the Liberals. “We know it’s already bad. We feel it today. But if this government continues on this path, they’re going to be putting the pedal to the metal, so to speak, to drive up emissions, increase the climate instability and create climate chaos. That’s the Liberal record. That’s this Premier’s record.

“Look at the science,” he said. “Look at the math. Look at this agreement. Look at your conscience. Look at the future. You can’t support this agreement of locking in 25 years of no environmental protections, giving away the store and harming the future.

“I can’t support this agreement on environmental reasons alone. It does not make sense. It’s bad for the future, and I will be voting against it.”

My challenge to the member for Vancouver–West End is that, hopefully, you’ll realize that — with this motion before us, this amendment before us, to give us six more months — you will stand and support this amendment because you realize that what is actually before us now makes what the Liberals brought forward pale in comparison. They looked like remarkable fiscal conservatives in their dealing with LNG, relative to what’s going on now.

Here we look like we don’t know what we’re doing, frankly. We just say: “What do you want? We’ll give it to you.” There’s no benefit for British Columbia. We may get a few hundred jobs in the construction phase. Even there, most of the construction is going to happen in Asia. There’ll be a boom and a bust. I suspect, even if it gets built, it won’t be operating for very long. We’ve had a bunch of snake oil promised to British Columbians, and this government is no better, in that regard, than the previous government.

To the member for Surrey-Whalley, who’s sitting there looking at his phone, who, I know, wants to recall and think back upon his sage words of advice that he presented to this Legislature on April 15, 2015, when speaking against the response to the Liquefied Natural Gas Income Tax Amendment Act.

This is what he had to say: “Yet now before the House, in Bill 23 and Bill 26, this bill, is a mechanism to lower, drama­tically, corporate income tax returns from these projects and natural gas royalties. The total tax return, the return from the publicly owned resource to the citizens of British Columbia is diminishing once again, and the mechanisms by which that’s done, the agreements by which this is entered into are not going to be disclosed publicly.”

Well, pretty remarkable….. Same thing happening right now, except the giveaway is being taken to a whole new level, because as I’ve articulated multiple times before, the LNG Income Tax Act — government wants to repeal it. That’s one place where we were going to get some income. However, they want to keep in place the tax credit.

We’ve already, as articulated earlier, given away $6 billion in credits from the deep-well royalty regime — $6 billion, with $3.2 billion of unclaimed credits into the future. We’re not going to earn money from royalties. We don’t want LNG Canada to pay the carbon tax, of course, so we’re going to call them “cleanest in the world,” despite the fact that they’re not. We’re going to redefine “clean” to sure make that, by definition, LNG Canada is the cleanest in the world. That’s the definition, it seems to me, because as far as I can tell, the government’s making this up on the fly.

[5:25 p.m.]

I have a bunch more comments from the member for Surrey-Whalley, but I think I’ve made my point. The point being, quite clearly, that in 2015, in 2016 and in 2014, government members were sitting in opposition, and they were profoundly troubled about the direction that this then government was going.

Time after time, speaker after speaker, they stood and passionately argued for worrying about the issue of the climate, worrying about climate change. And that’s before the forest fires that happened two years in a row in B.C. That’s before the flooding that was going on. That’s before the absolute devastation that’s there now in Mozambique, where vast swaths of land have been turning into a lake, flooding towns and villages.

Before all of that, they were passionate about this. Then they came into government, and the thrill of having the decision-making power and the potential challenge of doing something Christy Clark couldn’t — well, that just was too much. So here we are debating a bill before us, a bill which we need more time to look at, the six months more, which is why this amendment is so critical. We’re debating this, and we’re basically saying: how low can we go? How desperate are we in British Columbia? How desperate are we in British Columbia to deliver what Christy Clark couldn’t?

Internationally we know that Canada’s natural gas reserves pale in comparison to those of, say, Iraq, Qatar and Russia. They’re smaller than the U.S. We’ve got active production in Australia. The world is a glut with natural gas, because, despite what the B.C. NDP and, before them, the B.C. Liberals might want you to believe, we’re not the only ones with shale formations, and we’re certainly not the only ones with access to horizontal fracking technology.

However, unlike many, our shale reserves are very, very deep, so we have to go deep down. We’re actually a little more expensive to get down there. We, fortunately, have some wet wells in the Montney region. The Horn River Basin — completely shut down now, as far as I can tell, because of the dry basin. So we’re struggling in a very competitive world.

What we should be doing, and why we need these six months to actually reflect upon this very important motion, this hoist motion brought forward by my colleague, is to be able to understand the ramifications of this and the implications of this bill on the climate plan that is embodied in CleanBC. We will not do that without this additional time.

With that, hon. Speaker, I thank you for your attention.

S. Furstenau: I just want to speak very briefly in support of the hoist motion by my colleague from Saanich North and the Islands. What my colleague is asking for in moving this amendment is that we step back from this contradictory pathway that government is contemplating.

A new, expanding fossil fuel industry is not the future that our province should be leaning into. The challenges in front of us demand that we pursue a different course of action and the opportunities to incentivize it. Choosing to take action on climate change is no longer a luxury that we can afford to let go by. We are already seeing the impacts in every community across the province, and LNG only brings two conjoined challenges: it contributes to climate change, which is placing such a cost on our province, and it forces our communities to become tied to an industry whose light is fading.

We see the challenges Alberta is having charting a path forward to a sustainable economy. I don’t envy that challenge. Communities throughout that province are deeply tied to fossil fuel development, so much so that change is resisted everywhere.

People want to know that they will have employment that gives their lives purpose and an income that lets them support their family and their children. When we are so far ahead and we have an alternative right in front of us with CleanBC, why would we want to tie our communities to this development? We know it is finite. We know it’s not going to last. We know it is a boom-and-bust economy. We know the fluctuations that natural gas prices have gone through. There is no security in this path.

Imagine instead that we create the Pacific Northwest institute for renewable energy in Terrace, B.C. Imagine that we invite the greatest minds in renewable energy to come to B.C. and to be the innovators and the leaders to take us not only in this province to a zero-carbon economy but the rest of the world, and we lead that way. Imagine that vision for our province.

[5:30 p.m.]

Let’s choose a different path, one with untold benefits. We aren’t simply fighting climate change because we have to. Truly embracing a vision for our province of a sustainable, healthy future allows us to address other issues as well.

While we reshape our energy systems, we can reshape our communities in ways that help us to live better. Transportation that incorporates more multimodal ways of getting around. Economies that focus on local food, local manufacturing and local benefits going straight back into that community.

Ensuring every British Columbian has conditions to live a healthy, fulfilling life in a flourishing, supportive environment should be one of government’s most important responsibilities. There is a bright future for B.C., but we only set ourselves back when we insist on doing what we’ve always done — by giving tax credits and incentives to the fossil fuel industry.

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

My colleagues and I have been clear. We will not support an expansion of taxpayer-funded giveaways to help support a large fossil fuel industry, and we will not help the government pursue a pathway that we fundamentally believe is wrong. We are focused on seeing B.C. seize the extraordinary opportunity it has in front of it to build a sustainable economy and a new vision for communities across this province.

M. Bernier: Speaking to the amendment that was presented by the Green Party, obviously, on this side of the House, the B.C. Liberals, our position for LNG has always been strong. Our position to try to see it come to fruition has always been there, as the Green Party’s position of being against it has been steadfast and consistent.

The only ones that seem to be differing constantly on this one are the now government and the NDP. So I’m not sure how they will vote on this, because as we’ve heard, many of them are going to have a hard time looking at themselves in the mirror, knowing that they have publicly, and in this House, spoken vehemently against having LNG in British Columbia.

On this side of the House, we’re looking forward to getting to committee stage, at the very least, so we can question and challenge the minister and government on how they’ve arrived at some of their conclusions and some of the support for this.

We cannot support this amendment, and we look forward to committee stage.

Deputy Speaker: Seeing no further speakers, the motion is: “That the motion for second reading of Bill (No. 10) intituled Income Tax Amendment Act, 2019 be amended by deleting the word ‘now’ and substituting ‘six months hence.’”

[5:35 p.m.]

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Amendment negatived on the following division:

[5:40 p.m.]

[R. Chouhan in the chair.]

On the main motion.

Deputy Speaker: The member for Peace River North. [Applause.]

D. Davies: Thank you. We’ll see how this looks after this is all done, if I still get the applause.

Thank you for the opportunity to take my place here today to speak to Bill 10, the Income Tax Amendment Act. This act, as we know, repeals the LNG Income Tax Act and the LNG Project Agreements Act, which makes me wonder why the NDP had to come up with a complete new framework to get this deal.

Of course, I have my opinions on this, and I’m sure some of my colleagues, as well, do. It doesn’t take much — other than a quick search on Google and Hansard, of course — to see the blatant opposition that this current government has portrayed over the last number of years. I will say the Leader of the Third Party did an excellent job at bringing a number of those quotes forward, and I will be holding up a little bit of that. Well, my whole speech won’t be that, though, unlike the last hour that the Leader of the Third Party did.

When you combine the opposition that government has had on the LNG industry over the past number of years now with the truckloads of red tape that’s been introduced over the past few months, land use issues around the province, the words “lack of competitiveness” come to mind. I could go on for hours quoting ministers and members of the now sitting government side on the quotes that….

Interjections.

Deputy Speaker: Members, can we have conversation a little bit quiet, please?

Continue, Member.

D. Davies: Thank you, Mr. Speaker.

Unlike the Green Party — and I did appreciate some of the words that the Green Party said — we do support the LNG industry, and we are happy that the plan is to see this industry move forward.

As the hypocritical NDP world turns, and in the words of the now Premier on December 30, 2015: “I would stop spending all of my time talking about an industry that’s going nowhere. I would instead look at those areas of the B.C. economy that are really thriving.” Well, thank goodness that there has been a complete about-face on the approach of the Premier and his government on moving forward on this incredible opportunity for British Columbia.

This is the largest investment decision in British Columbia history — in fact, the largest investment in Canadian history. I certainly want to take a moment to recognize the former Premier of British Columbia, Christy Clark, as well as the member for Langley East for the incredible time and work that they did on this file, as well as all the other B.C. Liberal MLAs that worked so hard on this file.

Again, as I mentioned, I am personally very pleased that this project is planning to move ahead. I can personally say that on behalf of probably all, or almost all, of the constituents that live in my riding, as well as the whole northeast. I am in the heartland of B.C.’s natural gas. In the words of the Fort St. John mayor, Mayor Ackerman, there is no liquefied natural gas without our natural gas. Or the mayor used to always say that there’s no LNG without our NG.

[5:45 p.m.]

I’m very proud to be one of the founding members of the FSJ for LNG committee that was formed a few years ago and helped organize a number of rallies in the communities — in Fort St. John and Fort Nelson areas.

LNG is good for British Columbia. It’s good for Canadians, and it is good for the world, when we look at trying to get China and India and these large economies moving away from coal on to a cleaner-burning natural gas.

It’s good for jobs. It’s good for careers throughout the province of British Columbia. It’s good, especially good, for jobs and careers in my region, as well as in the northwest. My colleague from Skeena, who spoke a little earlier, articulated it so well — about the opportunities that the LNG industry will be providing our Indigenous communities and people, raising so many communities out of poverty.

My job, as it is for all of us that sit on this side of this place, is to assess the nature of this agreement and this bill that has been presented. We are hopeful that we can do this in much greater detail as we move into committee stage.

This project and what it represents is so important for B.C. that it must truly be fully transparent. Unfortunately, transparency is something that this government seems to be lacking as of late in a number of areas.

When the B.C. Liberals were in government, we took the approach of being fully transparent. In fact, many members who were here previously would remember that there was a special sitting of the Legislature on this issue, for which the Leader of the Third Party had to cut his holiday short, apparently. We are, therefore, hoping to operate on the very same principle — that the current government will embark on the same level of disclosure and will allow that this agreement be scrutinized in its entirety. We hope.

The official opposition has received an initial briefing in the Legislature, just yesterday. We have already learned that there are significant aspects of the agreement and calculations of revenue relating to the province that the government is unwilling to share with the public and keep secret. Where is the transparency? British Columbians deserve and expect the right to know what the details are. Is this a good deal for B.C.’ers? Is this a good deal for all of British Columbia?

From the legislation, we see that there are significant consequences of the agreement in relation to the carbon tax handout, a cap at $30 per tonne. After next week, on April 1, when you are going to be paying $40 a tonne on your home heating, the fuel in your car…. I brought a bill from Pacific Northern, my own personal bill. I look at my commodity charges, $69.50. The carbon tax right now is $67.90. After April 1, the carbon tax will surpass the commodity charge on my home heating bill. It’s a little different story for people that live up in the north when it comes to heating, because we have no choice but to use natural gas.

You’ll also be enjoying the increase — up to, now, 8.9 cents per litre on your fuel — when you fill up your vehicles. It makes you wonder why this deal locks the company in at $30 per tonne forever.

Now, like this tax or not, as this tax goes up and up and up — and nobody really knows how high the NDP are going to take the carbon tax — the rest of B.C. will be paying more and more and more.

Furthermore, what about all the other industries — my colleague from Skeena talked about this — around B.C. that are currently operating in British Columbia, or all the industries that are maybe looking at coming to British Columbia to bring their companies here? What does that mean for them? I would think they’re going to want that deal too.

[5:50 p.m.]

As I mentioned earlier, I am here to do a job, and there are a couple of things that we need to look at moving forward: first, to what extent are the interest of British Columbians protected, and second, to what extent does the government present a framework that meets their own expectations from when they were in opposition?

There are not enough spoons in this entire building to feed back each and every word that the opposition stated while they were sitting in opposition. Crow soup. Again, there are not enough spoons to feed it. But I’m not going to read off all the quotes. The Leader of the Third Party did a good job at that, and I do want to save some for the rest of my colleagues as we move on in this debate.

Let’s just start looking at some of the framework that the B.C. Liberals had set out, some of the items that we had looked at prior to moving forward.

Sixty-four natural gas pipeline benefit agreements that were signed with 29 First Nations. This includes Coastal GasLink, one of the main pipelines, that we are hearing lots about lately, which has now signed agreements with 100 percent of the elected First Nations along the route. Long-term royalty agreements that provided certainty to the industry. Project development agreements with proponents. Plans to ensure B.C. gas would be used.

Environmental stewardship initiatives. Hosting LNG in B.C. conferences, which the NDP have since cancelled. Trade missions to promote investment in British Columbia.

There are a number of pieces that I could go on and talk about. I would expect that the NDP will at least meet or exceed just some of these points that we had. Again, hopefully, we have the opportunity to dive into this a little deeper during the committee stage.

But this isn’t only what we expected as we move forward; it’s what we expect now. British Columbians expect this. British Columbians deserve to have the facts. They deserve to have the facts on an agreement that is going to bind us for many, many years to come. Unfortunately, this government again seems to be hiding these facts, showing no transparency of this deal — the secrecy again.

The legislation has significant ramifications for all of us. The groundwork has now been set for every project, as I mentioned, to do the me-too as we move forward.

Another problem, from what I can see, is that the structure of the deal removes incentives to utilize B.C. gas — gas from my region. British Columbians own this resource. We’re very lucky to have such a resourceful province. Up where I live…. My colleague from Peace River South talked a little bit about this. We’re in heart of the Montney play. A bit further north, near Fort Nelson, is one of the biggest gas fields on the continent, the Horn River Basin. Still good gas, though.

So where is the guarantee? Where is the guarantee in this agreement that B.C. gas will be used in the LNG facility? I am hopeful that the minister can shed some light on this as we go into committee stage. Because I’ll tell you, a lot of people in my region are quite concerned and depend on the outcome of this.

As well, living just a stone’s throw away from Alberta, and my colleague from Peace River South is much shorter than a stone’s throw away….

Interjection.

D. Davies: And a little bit taller. The Montney play goes right into Alberta. They equally have as much of the Montney play, if not a little more than I think British Columbia does. The connectivity between Alberta and British Columbia, with pipelines between our two provinces, is significant.

[5:55 p.m.]

We want to see somewhere in this deal a guarantee for the use of B.C. gas. Again, I do look forward to having these questions answered and to look more into these in committee stage.

There’s another major point for British Columbians, as well as the folks in my riding, again. A few years ago, the then opposition, now government, MLAs, many of them now current ministers, went on at length that it was imperative to contractually bind companies for local hiring and procurement. It was imperative. Well, again, we don’t see that here in what we’ve been presented so far. We will be interested to know how the government’s going to reconcile this position.

In fact, the now Labour Minister said on November 4, 2014: “You have started off by giving away B.C. tax revenue. What’s next — jobs?” Well, Minister, have we? These are the questions, again, that I’m looking forward to being brought forward during committee stage. I’ll tell you, I’m sure that the residents up in the northeastern part of British Columbia, in Fort St. John and certainly in Fort Nelson, as well as across the province, are going to be asking and looking forward too.

In fact, the irony of the situation is that given the structure that we’ve seen in this bill, more gas than the government intends will be sourced from Alberta. I completely agree with the now Minister of Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources when she said on July 14, 2015: “Well, I just want to be clear that on this side of the House” — over there — “we do say yes to good deals for British Columbians, and we say no to selling out this province.” I agree with that. We want to make sure that this is a good deal for British Columbians, for all British Columbians.

Again, I’m sorry, Mr. Speaker. I don’t have enough time in the day, actually, to read all the quotes back that the government has given us to move forward in this debate. There are lots. There are pages of them, actually, that the now government has made against this industry, but I also do want my colleagues to be able to use them as well.

We know the agreement is public, other than the secret parts of the agreement. You take from that what you want. What is being kept from British Columbians? The question, I hope, will be: will the government allow us to explore this further during committee? I guess that remains to be seen. The secret non-transparent approach to so many things seems to be a new theme that this government is doing. All we need to do is look at the Cariboo issue and how it’s being handled right now.

You know, the previous government allowed for quite a bit of openness and transparency. The agreement was debated at length, open, in this House. Unfortunately, that seems to be missing. There are many other, further questions that need to be addressed. Will Alberta undercut British Columbia’s 9 percent corporate tax rate? How unfortunate would it be if a made-in-B.C. LNG company would be based in Calgary? Wouldn’t that be unfortunate? Unbelievable to actually think that could happen. I am looking forward, as well, to hearing something in this agreement that will prevent that.

[6:00 p.m.]

The government also refuses to tell us the real value of the $596 million PST break. The amount to be repaid is end-loaded 20 years from now. Let’s be realistic. Inflation will significantly decrease that value.

There was a little bit of talk as well, and I won’t go too much into detail, on the industrial electricity rates. Of course, I come from the area of the Site C dam, roughly 7 kilometres from my home. There’s been lots of movement toward electrifying our province, but we don’t see anything in this agreement to give incentives for this project to electrify, and this was a condition, under the B.C. Liberals’ plan, to make sure that there were pieces of the agreement that made these companies, these LNG proponents, electrify. Again, this is something that’s not included.

The LNG industry, again…. I want to reiterate the importance of it. We are in favour of it. I have been fighting for the LNG industry for many years now. For workers in the industry, LNG means food on the table. It means heat in our homes, hockey lessons for children, good seniors care for their grandparents. It means viability in so many of our northern communities that rely on this resource sector.

LNG is currently trucked into the north to provide mines and communities with a source of fuel, and it is a much cleaner source than diesel. This is an opportunity that we can provide the other parts of the world that still burn dirty coal. The industry up north has an opportunity to be vibrant, and we are looking forward to that being the case.

In closing, I am glad that the government has made a visit to the almighty oracle and had an epiphany to get on board with LNG after years and years, comment after comment, opposition beyond opposition against the LNG industry. We and myself truly are happy to see this move forward. My job and our job on this side, though, is to critique this bill. It’s to critique this as we move forward and make sure that British Columbians are getting the best possible deal that we can on our resource that we own. We are hoping that this comes clear during committee stage, which I look forward to moving into in the very short future.

Hon. G. Chow: Good afternoon. It is my pleasure to rise today to speak in support of the new LNG legislation, Bill 10. This legislation brings together the elements needed to support the largest private sector investment in B.C.’s history. The LNG Canada project will deliver many long-term benefits and thousands of good jobs for people in B.C. From the start, we have required four fundamental conditions for an LNG industry in B.C.: creating good jobs for British Columbians, creating a positive financial return for British Columbians, forming meaningful Indigenous partnerships and protecting our clean air, land and water.

[6:05 p.m.]

This legislation is the last step in establishing a framework that delivers benefits for people while meeting the goal of CleanBC. It’s within our overall climate framework that LNG Canada was made possible, the cleanest large-scale project of its kind in the world. There is no doubt that this project will play an important role in the B.C. economy in the years ahead. The LNG sector will contribute jobs, it will support regional development, and it will grow international trade.

B.C. is a relatively small, open economy. We recognize the incredible potential for trade and investment to create more opportunities for British Columbians. It is estimated that there are approximately four direct jobs for every $1 million of export, plus two additional indirect jobs.

There is no doubt that developing a new LNG industry will open up many opportunities for exports. Last year, B.C. had $2½ billion in natural gas exports, but all that export of natural gas went to our neighbour, the United States. With LNG, we’ll be able to tap new markets for our natural gas in regions such as East Asia, Southeast Asia and the regions beyond.

It is an exciting time for our province from a trade standpoint. Canada, and by extension British Columbia, have first-mover advantage as the only country to have free trade agreements with all other nations in the G7 and other countries as well. We have two trade agreements that will help us to improve our access to markets such as Korea and Japan. Those two agreements are the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, CPTPP for short, and the Canada-Korea Free Trade Agreement. These two agreements have both removed all tariffs on LNG exports, giving Canada preferential access to those markets.

I recently returned from a trade mission with the Minister of Jobs, Trade and Technology, where we travelled to Japan and Korea. Those are our third- and fourth-largest trading partners for our province, British Columbia. In our meetings in Tokyo and Seoul, we talked about LNG Canada, our policy, our CleanBC initiative and the opportunity for continued investment in British Columbia.

For example, we met with Korea Gas Corp., or KOGAS, one of the partners in LNG Canada. KOGAS is the world’s largest importer of LNG. It has plans to import 700,000 tonnes per year of liquefied natural gas from the LNG Canada project. We toured the KOGAS LNG receiving terminal with much interest. What was also interesting for me is that the LNG terminal also has a museum to educate the public, children and school children about LNG and the fact that LNG and all forms of energy are a precious and finite resource and commodity and therefore should be used wisely while still bringing benefits to our daily lives.

Also in Korea, more than a couple of local people approached me regarding my reaction to the smog pollution that was blanketing the cities. While of course the cause of the smog is still under study, my own assessment is that it has some connection to the coal-burning electrical generation plants that are in operation in the region.

We are fortunate in British Columbia that 95 percent of our electric generation comes from hydroelectric power. There is no such luxury in Korea and many Asian countries. With this bill, the opportunity to export our clean natural gas will be closer to a reality. This will not only enhance our trade exports to Asia, but also help to reduce the use of coal for electrical generation and heating throughout the region.

One way our ministry helps to keep B.C. on the leading edge of Canadian economic growth and jobs creation is by making B.C. a preferred trade and investment destination. Given the current trade challenges, we are focusing even more on trade diversification.

[6:10 p.m.]

It is critically important for B.C. to continue to open new markets and continue to grow new sectors. The prosperity of people in British Columbia depends on growth. The Economic Forecast Council predicts that B.C.’s strong economy will outperform Canada’s economy over the next three years.

At 4½ percent, British Columbia continues to have the lowest unemployment rate in the country. This past year B.C.’s average wage grew by 4.1 percent, the highest among the provinces. In fact, in 2018, B.C. had the highest annual wage growth in the past ten years, and good jobs with good wages mean that British Columbians, their families and communities are benefiting from our strong economy.

In conclusion, today’s legislation not only formalizes the details of our agreement with LNG Canada; it moves our province forward in building a truly competitive LNG industry in B.C. through collaborative partnership, through protecting the stated interests of First Nations and through safeguarding our clean air, our land and our water. We’re building an industry that will generate great returns for the people of British Columbia.

Hon. Speaker, thank you for the opportunity to speak.

Hon. B. Ralston: It’s a pleasure to rise in the House to address the bill, the Income Tax Amendment Act.

I want to begin by talking a little bit about what the LNG Canada project represents for the future of our province. As everyone, I suppose, is aware, on October 1 of last year, LNG Canada’s joint venture partners Shell, Petronas, Petro­China, Mitsubishi and KOGAS announced a final investment decision to build the LNG Canada export facility in Kitimat. With that announcement, LNG Canada became the largest private sector investment in the history of the country. It will also be the cleanest large-scale project of its type in the world.

This $40 billion investment is a strong vote of confidence in British Columbia. It shows it is possible to balance our economic, environmental and reconciliation priorities. Earlier last year, in March, our government introduced a new LNG framework which unlocked this investment and its benefits for British Columbians. The LNG framework included four conditions that put people first, paving the way for significant economic opportunities now while also making sure we could create a sustainable and prosperous future for the generations that follow.

Under this framework, all projects should, one, guarantee a fair return for British Columbia’s natural resources; two, guarantee jobs and training opportunities for British Columbians; respect and make partners of First Nations; and fourthly, protect British Columbia’s air, land and water, including living up to the province’s climate commitments recently codified in CleanBC. This approach is working.

LNG Canada and its project partners Fluor and Coastal GasLink have made it clear that they are committed to delivering jobs and economic benefits to First Nations, local representatives and British Columbians. They are making investments in workforce development with a $1.4 million trades training fund in coordination with the B.C. Construction Association. To date, and this is significant in terms of…. It’s demonstrating the support of First Nations in British Columbia to the project. So $620 million in contracts have been awarded to northern British Columbia Indigenous businesses for camps, for clearing, for medical services and for security services.

Through LNG Canada and the many other investments coming into our province, our government is building a strong, sustainable economy that works for people in British Columbia.

Let me provide some context on the state of British Columbia’s economy and highlight LNG Canada’s role in ensuring it remains robust. The Economic Forecast Council — which is an independent advisory council to the Minister of Finance, consisting of bank and credit union economists, largely, and also some independent economists — has recently predicted that British Columbia’s strong economy will outperform Canada’s economy over the next three years.

[6:15 p.m.]

At 4.5 percent, British Columbia continues to have the lowest unemployment rate in the country. This past year British Columbia’s average wages grew by 4.1 percent, the highest among provinces. In fact, 2018 was British Columbia’s highest annual wage growth in the past ten years. Naturally, good jobs with good wages mean that British Columbians, their families and their communities are benefiting from British Columbia’s strong economy.

For example, Kamloops is experiencing population growth, and at the same time, their unemployment rate fell five times faster than the rest of the province last year. The unemployment rate in the Thompson-Okanagan declined by 2.5 percentage points since last year. Prince George is the site of four of five major projects in the B.C. Major Projects Inventory, totalling $540 million.

As is clear from those examples, this growth is echoed in communities around the province. We are helping, as a government, businesses address recruitment challenges by taking strong steps to tackle the housing crisis across the province.

The LNG Canada project is an important part of that approach. The project is expected to generate $23 billion in government revenues, bringing new resources for the priorities of government: health care, housing, schools and child care for the people of B.C. It will create at least 1,000 jobs during the construction phases and 950 permanent jobs for people in northern British Columbia once operations are underway.

The joint venture companies have reached agreements with First Nations at the plant site and along the pipeline route to ensure First Nations are meaningful partners and see real benefits. LNG Canada has committed to using the latest technology to build the world’s cleanest LNG project, with the lowest emissions of any facility extant at the present time.

The October 2018 announcement of the final investment decision for LNG Canada was a critical milestone, but, really, it’s only the beginning. With this legislation, we are taking a step forward to build a competitive industry here in British Columbia. This industry will generate thousands of new jobs for citizens, supporting local communities while balancing our CleanBC goals.

This legislation puts the LNG industry on equal footing with other industrial sectors by repealing old measures that created barriers to investment. This is good news for investors like Mitsubishi and KOGAS, whom I met with on my recent mission, along with the Minister of State for Trade, in Japan and South Korea. In our meetings in Tokyo and Seoul, we talked about LNG Canada, CleanBC and their enthusiasm for continued investment in British Columbia.

Today’s legislation not only formalizes the details of our agreement with LNG Canada — I have several concluding remarks here before I finish my brief speech — but it moves our province forward in building a truly competitive LNG industry here in British Columbia. Through this legislation and through our ongoing work with LNG Canada partners, we will create significant economic opportunities, while continuing our work here in British Columbia to make life affordable and sustainable for all our citizens.

S. Furstenau: Noting the time, I’m wondering if I could reserve my right and give us a little bit of an early adjournment today.

Deputy Speaker: Member, maybe you could just start, and then we’ll see how we proceed.

S. Furstenau: All right. Thank you, hon. Speaker.

I thank you for the opportunity to speak to Bill 10, the Income Tax Amendment Act. I recognize this is a defining moment for our Legislature, and I am incredibly privileged to have a platform to speak to you, my chamber colleagues, to British Columbians today and to British Columbians of the future, through the official written record.

This bill aims to bring the NDP’s liquefied natural gas framework into force. It details the publicly funded handouts that are being offered to industry in exchange for the expansion of natural gas development in this province. It trades tax breaks for the construction of the single biggest point source of greenhouse gas emissions in the history of Canada.

[6:20 p.m.]

My caucus colleagues and I have been clear. We will never support an expansion of taxpayer-funded giveaways to help support a large fossil fuel industry. We will not help the B.C. NDP implement an LNG regime, and we will not be complicit in our silence. We will use our votes and our voices to say no. This is the wrong decision and the wrong direction for our province in 2019.

We will not — not now, not ever — vote to advance major fossil fuel expansion, and we will continue to work to advance strong climate policy for the province, because communities are already facing significant impacts from climate change, and that is our job. Whether it’s wildfires, floods, droughts, species extinction or crop failures, B.C.’s communities are at the front lines of this fight. By pursuing LNG, you are tying our communities to an industry that is contributing to these challenges, while failing to invest in a sustainable, low-carbon future.

The world’s leading climate scientists have warned us time and time again that if global emissions do not start to dramatically decline in the next few years, many millions of people, including British Columbians, will be at severe risk. This morning, on CBC, on the national news, the former first lady of Mozambique declared that Beira is the first city to be lost to climate change.

Ecosystems, plants and animals are facing widespread extinction. The future of humanity, as we know, hangs in the balance. We only have until 2030 to keep global warming to a maximum of 1.5 degrees, beyond which even half a degree will significantly worsen the climate change impacts and drag hundreds of millions of people into poverty.

This is not new information. Scientists have been raising concerns about what their data has shown for decades. What is new, however, is how urgent and dire the scientific warnings have become. In recent years, the consequences of rising CO₂ in temperatures have become painfully clear. We are on target to take ocean surface acidity into a realm for which we have no known comparison in the history of the Earth.

Coral beds that have been around for millions of years will go extinct. In Canada, overall precipitation will increase, but it will come in fewer, more extreme events interspersed between longer periods of drought. There will be an in­creased risk of flooding and, as we’ve seen summer after summer in British Columbia, an increased risk of wildfires.

Think for a moment about massive crop failures, economic collapse and millions of climate refugees desperate for safer homes. Our growing consumption levels are unsustainable on an Earth with finite resources, and the limit is clearly in view. The amount of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere now far exceeds the natural range of the last 650,000 years. It is still rising very quickly because of decisions like the one before us today.

Reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have made it painfully clear that we only have a few short years to steer away from the catastrophic climate change by drastically reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, starting right now.

[Mr. Speaker in the chair.]

Yet in the face of all of that, the majority of members — I would say the vast majority of members in this House — are selling out to score a fossil fuel project that plans to drastically increase our emissions from 2023 to the year 2060.

LNG Canada, a project set to become the single biggest point source of emissions in the country’s history, will pollute until after your children are retired. It will pollute the province your grandchildren are born into.

On that cheerful note, I will reserve my right and call for adjournment.

S. Furstenau moved adjournment of debate.

Motion approved.

Committee of Supply (Section A), having reported resolution, was granted leave to sit again.

Hon. S. Robinson moved adjournment of the House.

Motion approved.

Mr. Speaker: This House stands adjourned until 1:30 tomorrow afternoon.

The House adjourned at 6:25 p.m.