Special Legislative Committee on Bill C-39 If Canada truly wants to strengthen its economy, we should be racing to build the clean-energy economy with the most rigorous, credible, independent project review system in the world, not dismantling ours in the dash for gas, oil and nuclear. The Legislative Committee on Bill C-39 is accepting submissions until Monday October 26th at 5:00 PM. You submit briefs here.
House of Commons
Ottawa, ON
Re: Bill C-39, An Act respecting certain measures to strengthen the economy
Dear Committee Members,
My name is Cathy Orlando and I am a resident of Sudbury, Ontario. I am writing to you as the director of Citizens’ Climate Lobby Canada, a Northerner, and as an ally to Indigenous peoples, regarding Bill C-39, which I urge you to substantially amend or reject.
I want to start with the bigger picture. Yes, the United States has shown itself to be an untrustworthy partner by electing Donald Trump twice. Yes, his presidency has upended our economy and our assumptions. But presidencies pass, and the puck is going where it has been going for years: toward clean energy. The global investment consensus, our trading partners in Europe and Asia, and the physics of the climate emergency all point the same direction. In fact, when Citizens’ Climate Lobby first began this work, between 2010 and 2013, we gave many of our MPs and Senators the Scientific American paper by Jacobson and Delucchi, A Plan to Power 100 Percent of the Planet with Renewables. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-path-to-sustainable-energy-by-2030/.
Bill C-39 moves us in exactly the wrong direction. The Build Canada Strong Act is designed to steamroll over environmental protections and project review processes to accelerate construction of road, rail, ports and nuclear projects. According to We The Free Nuclear North, the bill transfers impact assessment of nuclear projects from the independent Impact Assessment Agency to the nuclear industry-led Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission. As a Northerner, this hits home: high-level nuclear waste is slated to be transported through our Northern Ontario communities to a deep geological repository, and my neighbours and I deserve a genuinely independent review of those routes and risks, not one led by the very industry that profits from the outcome.
The so-called “regions of national interest” are equally alarming. Cabinet-designated zones where mega-projects are automatically approved, regardless of impacts on our health, our waters, or the species that depend on them, are sacrifice zones, plain and simple. In a region where so many communities, Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike, live downstream and downwind of resource projects, this is reckless.
We have been here before as a nation, and we know how it ends: the mercury poisoning of Grassy Narrows First Nation remains unresolved to this day, and North Bay’s drinking water at Trout Lake is currently threatened by the forever chemical Perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS). When environmental oversight is treated as an obstacle, it is Northern families who pay the price, sometimes for generations. It is unconscionable to go backwards and to designate dead zones where the health of our communities and waters no longer counts.
As an Indigenous ally, I echo the Assembly of First Nations, Chiefs of Ontario, and Nishnawbe Aski Nation, who have stated that Bill C-39 overrides inherent, Treaty and constitutionally protected rights. Economic development designations must never become blanket consent. Northern Ontario is First Nations’ territory before it is anyone’s “region of national interest.” https://chiefs-of-ontario.org/first-nations-leaders-reject-bill-c-39-and-the-rush-to-force-it-through-rights-cannot-be-fast-tracked/
Finally, the process itself is the problem: a 250-page omnibus bill, rushed through simultaneous House and Senate studies on a timeline that makes genuine scrutiny impossible, is not democratic lawmaking, it is a rubber stamp.
The economy we should be strengthening is a clean one, built on consent, science, and the rule of law, an economy that will still be standing long after this American presidency is over. I urge you to take the time this bill deserves, listen to the tens of thousands of Canadians who have spoken out, and reject these measures.
Sincerely, Cathy Orlando
Director of Citizens’ Climate Lobby Canada
2195 Armstrong Street
Sudbury, ON P3E 4W2
1 705 929 4043, cathy@citizensclimate.org Want to make a submission?
