Liberal MP wants to see major projects bill amended, studied further

OTTAWA — Liberal MP Nate Erskine-Smith warned Tuesday that Parliament is hastily plowing ahead with the government’s major projects bill when it should be in listening mode.

Erskine-Smith told reporters Tuesday he’s never seen a bill of this magnitude pushed through the House at such a pace in his 10 years as a Toronto MP.

He was the only Liberal MP to vote against his government’s motion limiting debate on the major legislation on Monday.

The Liberals and Conservatives passed a closure motion that will push Bill C-5, the Building Canada Act, through the House of Commons this week with limited committee study.

Erskine-Smith said he supports getting new projects built quickly but he wants to see the bill studied more thoroughly and amended to remove contentious clauses that grant the executive more power.

“We’re not adequately considering competing public interest considerations, democratic participation, in the course of shutting the debate down and certainly curtailing committee scrutiny,” he told reporters Tuesday outside Parliament.

“We should take a little bit more time to make sure we get it right.”

On Monday, Erskine-Smith told the House that the way debate on the bill is being throttled would “make (former prime minister Stephen) Harper blush” and said Liberals would “rightly scream if a federal Conservative government attempted the same.”

Erskine-Smith said he worries about what a future Conservative government would do with “unchecked power” to bypass laws in order to speed through project approvals.

“Do I trust a Pierre Poilievre government to protect Indigenous rights, to protect environmental rights, make sure they’re ensuring proper democratic participation in not only the designation, but how a law is excluded from applying to a national interest project?” he said. “Absolutely not.”

He added he’s optimistic about the prospects for amending the bill to include wider safeguards.

The Commons transport committee started its study of the bill on Tuesday and will go clause-by-clause through the legislation on Wednesday.

The legislation seeks to deliver on two of Prime Minister Mark Carney’s major election promises — to speed up federal project approvals for major industrial projects and to break down interprovincial trade barriers. Carney has promised to bring those barriers down by Canada Day.

The Senate adopted a programming motion that could see the bill passed by Parliament by the end of the month.

The Upper Chamber is studying the bill in committee of the whole — a rare move meant to align with the government’s timeline for getting the legislation passed.

Cabinet ministers have been appearing in the Senate all week to defend the bill.

Rebecca Alty, minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, dismissed concerns Tuesday about the most contentious clauses in the bill, which critics claim would let Ottawa bypass existing processes and laws to push through approvals.

She said project approvals will still be constrained by Charter rights and added the legislation requires consultation with Indigenous Peoples.

“Projects will only be designated following full consultation with affected Indigenous rights holders,” she told the Senate Chamber on Tuesday.

The government aims to speed up project approvals to a maximum of two years, although the bill itself does not include explicit timelines.

Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc said that’s a reasonable time frame in light of the economic threat posed by U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade war.

“Whatever the ultimate deal or arrangement that Canada comes to … the economic uncertainty and instability is not going to disappear right away,” LeBlanc said in the Senate Chamber on Tuesday.

“What President Trump has done — and the prime minister has said this in the election campaign — is he seeking to redefine many of the modern global trading relationships.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 17, 2025.

The Canadian Press