Bill 1, Asia Advisory Council Act

April 26, 2011

Mr. Anderson: On the bill, yes. Thank you, Mr. Chair. That was a riveting speech by the hon. Member for Fort McMurray-Wood Buffalo. Indeed, we are in a situation where the inmates are running the asylum and they’ve lost the keys and they’ve forgotten their address. It is a serious problem here.

I’d like to stand on Bill 1 and say that again – and I’ve said this before – this really is a sham of a bill. There’s no reason. If you go under all the different legislation, the cabinet is clearly empowered, the Premier is clearly empowered to set up basically any committee that they want to set up. So to waste this Assembly’s time and, frankly, to insult the intelligence of the people in this Assembly as well as Albertans to say that we’re going to use this Assembly as a way to pass some meaningless bill that allows us to form a committee, you know, it’s just beyond all reason.

Now, I’ve spent some time in Asia. I spent two years in Asia, actually, in the little island called Taiwan, and it is an incredible area of the world. Obviously, the population of Asia is massive, most of the world’s population lives there, particularly in the two countries of India and China. In Taiwan there are about 35 million people in an area the size of, basically, the Edmonton-Calgary corridor, and most of that land is mountainous and uninhabitable, so it was an even smaller amount. It’s very built up.

Asia is a very productive place. The Asian peoples – it doesn’t matter if they’re Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Malaysian, East Indian – are very hard-working peoples. They’re very competitive, and they’re very driven to succeed. Indeed, we do need to be competitive, and that’s a good thing. By their people being that way and their countries and nations being that way, I think that it makes us stronger because we have to compete, and we have to become better ourselves. I think that it’s a positive thing. Certainly, we don’t want to get left behind.

There are some things that we can do right now. We don’t need to wait for a committee to be formed by this law in order to be-come more competitive. Clearly, we need to be more competitive with regard to our regulatory framework. Our regulatory frame-work right now surrounding how we regulate business, industry, oil and gas, everything, frankly, has become very cumbersome. There’s far too much red tape. These are things that we can do immediately to start increasing our competitiveness with Asia. That’s one thing we can do.

With regard to establishing trade, we already know how important it is to diversify our economy, specifically our oil and gas exports, away from just the United States, which will always be an important customer that we need to develop and maintain a relationship with. We need to obviously have more customers, and Asia is a prime example of what’s needed. But what have we done on that front? We’re losing the debate on that front. I think this government is partially responsible for us losing ground in the debate on whether we should be able to export our resources to the west coast through oil tankers to China and India, et cetera, and to those hungry markets.

I think of, you know, our good friend Mr. Jack Layton of the federal New Democrats. I think of Mr. Ignatieff of the federal Liberals. You know, they have two very, I would say, anti Alberta energy sector strategies that would see a moratorium on oil tanker traffic going from the west coast, British Columbia, to overseas, and that’s very troubling. Now, notice that I said: the federal par-ties. I’m not saying that that’s the policy of the provincial counterparts here in Alberta. I’ll let them speak to that. I don’t think it is. But the point is that we’re losing that debate on a national scale.

Even our own Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has mused about a moratorium on oil tanker traffic. He’s backed away from that, and that’s good to hear. But if we can’t even convince our friends in Ottawa and the federal Conservatives to understand our point of view on that matter, how are we ever going to protect ourselves from potentially – God help us all – a Jack Layton led coalition government, an NDP coalition government, which is actually not something to laugh at anymore because it’s a possibility. I sure hope it doesn’t come to pass, but it is a possibility.

We need to do much better on this file, and we have been asleep at the switch. In my head I’m wondering what the heck Gary Mar, one of the leadership candidates for the PC Party, has been doing in Washington for the last several years. I don’t really know be-cause we have gotten exactly nowhere with regard to our relation-ship with the Obama administration, with the United States, on the importance of our oil sands. In fact, the most recent comments from Mr. Obama, frankly, have shown a real lack of understand-ing of just how important the oil sands are to the future energy security of this country and indeed North America and indeed, by extension, because we are talking about the United States, the world.

We have not made progress on that file, so I would like to know what Mr. Mar has been doing to earn that large paycheque over in Washington. I, frankly, would like to see an accounting of what he has done for this province in that regard because I sure don’t see many fruits of his labours in that regard. We’ve lost ground on that front, and I think that’s ridiculous.

Now, bringing that back to the Asia experience, it’s very important that we make sure that our oil and gas markets are open over there, but we do not need a committee. We certainly don’t need legislation forming a committee to do that. We do that by developing relationships with the folks over in these Asian economies, which Alberta businesses have done. We continue to go over there. You’ll never see me ever questioning folks like the former minister of agriculture going over to China, and there have been others that have gone over to China and India to promote Alberta. You will never hear me speak against that. The reason is because it is that important to build those relationships. There is no doubt about it.

You do not need a committee to build those relationships. You just go over, and you do it. You make sure that you have some tangible goals that you want to accomplish when you go over there. Paying a committee to come up with some kind of – I don’t know – strategy: you just don’t need that. Get together. The Prem-ier can appoint his own advisory group on Asia, that would be very knowledgeable, and you go forward. Again, you know, there has been dilly-dallying in that regard.

We should clearly right now be putting a full-court press on opening up our multiple pipelines to the west coast and doing everything that we can to promote that, to get that oil tanker traffic moving to Asia, get it moving to India, not just energy exports but all sorts of exports, including agriculture. It’s just critical that we get our agriculture exports to Asian markets in any way that we can.

We need to open up more partnerships between our universities, our postsecondary institutions. You know, it drives me crazy to watch skilled people coming over here from, in particular, India, frankly, with all kinds of degrees and learning, and then they have to sit and drive taxi for years instead of going straight into the professions they’ve been trained for, like being a doctor or being, you know, an engineer, just doing whatever it is. I understand there need to be standards and so forth, but we need to do a much better job of making sure that we’re working with these universities over in Asia.

For example, why can’t we set up a program that students in India and students in China can opt into and make sure that when they’re done with that program, they can come over here immediately and their credentials are up to speed. They can be trained over there, and then when they come over here, they’re ready to go. There’s no five-year, 10-year wait while they, you know, drive taxi, lose their skills. Their skills kind of get a little dull if they’re not working in their profession. We don’t have to lose all that time, nor do we have to spend a ton of money training them over here or expecting them to be trained over here. They can be trained over there. They can make sure that everything transfers, that they have all the credentials they need, and then for the people that have that degree and that accreditation, we could expedite their immigration to Canada because they’d be ready immediately to contribute to society and to contribute to our economy.

These are things that we could do if we were willing to put the time in. It’s important that this government start taking some practical approaches, taking some practical steps to open up trade and open up investment back and forth with Asia. But passing a bill in the Legislature saying that we’re going to form a committee on this is a joke. It’s as much of a joke, frankly, as the committee on competitiveness, that was set up last time. One of the first things they’ve done since then is raise by 150 per cent the cost of registering a new business. Whoa, what a great step in the right direction that is for small-business owners.

There’s such a disconnect between what this government says that it’s going to do and then what it actually does, and this is an example of it. When this passes – and I’m sure it will – this will mark one of many bills, certainly the second in as many years, where the Premier’s flagship bill has been, frankly, a very useless piece of legislation that does nothing.

It’s a shame because I think, you know, that when you have the opportunity, as this Premier has, with the massive majority that he has had, he would have the ability to put forward really meaningful legislation in the area of health care, making sure that we have proper health care reform and that we’re getting away from this 1960s-style health care system that we’ve created, where innovation is punished or slowed down, frankly, and where doctors are intimidated and nurses are intimidated and so forth. He could be the guy that’s leading the charge on this with Bill 1, a health care act, whistle-blower legislation, or something that would protect the rights of front-line health care workers. But that takes leader-ship, and that’s something this Premier has failed on so many occasions to provide.

He could have been in here talking about democratic reform: Bill 1, a fixed election date act, or Bill 1, a free-vote act, empowering MLAs to vote their conscience on every single bill, free from intimidation or penalty or the caucus whip.

Mrs. Forsyth: A whistle-blower act: that would be a good one.

Mr. Anderson: Yeah, whistle-blower protection. We were talking about that.

Or a property rights preservation act. He’s had so many opportunities to do the right thing, to show leadership with his Bill 1, and each time it seems it’s some kind of piece of feel-good, do-nothing legislation. It’s been a huge disappointment to watch this Premier.

He has passed some tough legislation, but he’s done it through cabinet ministers – some are sacrificial lambs, and they don’t know it, and some know full well what they’re doing – passing some of the most ridiculous legislation that this province has seen and certainly the most harmful with regard to the royalty frame-work legislation, property rights legislation, Bill 50, the way that health care has been handled, et cetera. You can go down the line. It’s been very disappointing.

I hope that whoever follows suit – if it’s Mr. Mar, hopefully he can explain what the heck he’s been doing for the last three years or however long he’s been in Washington so-called defending our interests.

Mrs. Forsyth: We didn’t need a Washington act to put him in there.

Mr. Anderson: Maybe we should have put a Washington act in place, the United States trade committee act. That’s right. We should strike a council to figure out how to be, you know, better friends with the United States. Clearly, that’s ridiculous. You just go down, and you do the job. You make sure that the people who are in place actually know what they’re doing, unlike Mr. Mar, who has done very, very little to take the Alberta story to Washington, DC. It has fallen on deaf ears, and we are way back from where we were even just a few short years ago in that regard, which is just very demoralizing. It affects our economy, and it affects our oil and gas and our energy workers, and it affects a great deal of things.

With that and on behalf of the Wildrose, I’d like to make sure that we push the government to actually accelerate and to push even harder to make sure that folks like Jack Layton and folks like Michael Ignatieff know that a moratorium on oil tanker traffic is completely unacceptable, that we will oppose that in every way possible, through the courts, politically, in any way we can, be-cause it’s wrong, and it’s an attack on our province. It’s a unilateral attack on our province. We should be out there making sure that that’s heard and making sure that if the rest of Canada, particularly the folks down east, wants to continue to have the fruits and the benefits of Alberta money in their coffers through the equalization program and other programs that we give them, then they need to respect our rights to export our products to markets like Asia.

I don’t think that case has been made enough by this government. It’s been made. I will give them credit. They have attempted to make the case, but it has fallen on deaf ears, and they have not pushed it hard enough. They need to start pushing harder and being louder, and that’s just the way it is.

We need to start with our own friends in the Conservative Party and make sure that they continue to say what they’ve now come around to saying, which is that they will not support a permanent oil tanker traffic ban. What they will support is making sure that oil tanker traffic is properly regulated, that there are double-hulled ships, that there are two-pilot boats or multiple-pilot boats, how-ever many are needed. No cost is too high to make sure that it’s safe and we don’t have a disaster. There are ways that people have learned throughout the years, after the Exxon Valdez oil spill, et cetera, of how to make sure those things do not happen.

We can make sure that we have the safest export market of oil and gas to Asia that can be possibly imagined, but we need to make sure that that is the case. I haven’t heard anything about that, any plan, any suggestions from this government on how we make that oil tanker traffic ironclad and make it completely safe going forward. I’d like to hear that. I’d like to hear them make that case to the federal Conservatives and, obviously, to Jack Layton and Ignatieff, who haven’t seemed to have gotten the memo about who is paying for so much in Confederation.

Mr. Boutilier: We’re not going to Windsor to shut down the auto industry plants.

Mr. Anderson: That’s right. It would be much like Mr. Layton going to Ontario and saying, “We’re going to shut down the auto industry,” or: “We’re going to put a moratorium on automobile traffic because they produce emissions of CO2 and that’s going to kill the earth. That’s just as dangerous as an oil spill, so we’re going to ban the sale of cars to the United States for that reason.” Of course, that’s lunacy. So why is it any less lunacy to say that we’re going to ban the main export of the province of Alberta, that pays for so many of the programs and the care and benefits that Albertans and Canadians coast-to-coast enjoy and use?

With that, I will not be supporting this useless bill, but I will be supporting the government in any action that it takes to open up our borders to the Asian market, to make sure we get our exports diversified over there, and to make sure the hon. Minister of SRD has an opportunity to go over to China and understand a little bit better what property rights do and do not mean.

With that, I will sit down, and we will hopefully have a vote on this soon.