Senator Wilson: My question for Mr. Pierce with the Canadian Chamber of Commerce — actually, part of it can be answered by anyone. While Bill C-5 is a great step forward for bringing investor confidence back to Canada in supporting projects that will benefit our economy, we have to acknowledge there is a broader regulatory environment that requires a lot of additional attention.

Mr. Pierce, in your remarks you mentioned greenwashing. Last year, Parliament passed Bill C-59, which featured a late-stage amendment on greenwashing that applies broadly to anybody making a representation about a business or business activity that relates to the environment. While intended to protect consumers from false advertising and misleading environmental claims about a company’s products or activities, the amendment, in practice, has had much wider implications than that, resulting in profound and unintended consequences. Can you please speak to the impact of this greenwashing amendment within the previous Bill C-59 and how it relates to the bill currently before us?

Mr. Pierce: Thank you very much for the question.

Here is a great example of a piece of legislation that was passed presumably with good intentions, that has been implemented by, I guess, one quasi government, one full department and that has created unbelievable uncertainty in the business community around what can and cannot be said for environmental claims for a project. So much so — and I do not know of another example of this — that the Department of Environment and Climate Change wrote into the Commissioner of Competition’s public consultation process to highlight the risks of this measure: that it would quell or stifle the participation of industry working with them.

One example is Bill C-59; there is a litany of others. The problem with that is the business community sits back and says, “Where are we going to deploy funds? Where are we going to invest? What projects are we going to invest in?” When they see a regulatory environment like that in Canada, they choose elsewhere because from their end, why would they put themselves at risk?

The penalty for a greenwashing violation, I believe — I’m going to look back to my boss to make sure I’m getting this number right — is 3% of global revenues. So find me a mining company in the world that is going to take that risk. That is already in force. There is some clarification coming into the Commissioner of Competition’s office recently that is with industry right now. But there is a private right of action section that comes into force on June 20, this month, and any organization can sue a company for making a false or misleading claim that doesn’t align with an international standard. That international standard is not defined. So it doesn’t say what that standard is that you shall be shooting for.

I can tell you I’ve talked to businesses specifically. They will not invest when that is the climate that they are looking at in Canada. That’s one example of many. Thank you for the question.

Senator Wilson: I have a second question for Mr. Khosla. Thank you very much for bringing up Roberts Bank Terminal 2, or RBT2. It’s a project I’m familiar with from my previous life, as I was involved in each of those 10 years that we went through in the regulatory process to get it to approval. I point out it’s still not finally approved because it still requires a Fisheries Act authorization.

Is there anything that we should be considering in terms of this legislation in relation to making those connections between some of the inland projects and, say, gateways, transportation corridors, those kinds of things? If we build one great thing in one part of the country, if it’s not connected to the other, it’s not going to do us very much good.

Mr. Khosla: That’s a terrific point. I think that would get into the part of the legislation where the projects lie. Right now, we don’t have that project list. It will probably be a schedule to the act. Once that project list emerges, you’ll start to see the variety of items that are out there. We need to ask a serious question: Can you monetize those?

For example, when I talk about financing, for every one of those projects as they get on that list, we should be able to say they are financially secure. We do not want bad projects going through the system. That means environmentally secure, but that also means financially secure. Financial security, or whether they are investable, also means that whatever they do, they can reach other markets, they can help other areas. So you have got to think about it in two ways. This is why that office, whatever it does, is supercritical. It cannot just be on the regulatory side. It absolutely has to look across the board, like you said.

As far as RBT2 goes and any other gateway out West, to my mind and according to many others, there are port access problems in this country. We can talk about Churchill, Manitoba. That’s a great long-term concept. Out West, we need something. RBT2 hopefully will be approved way before this ever happens.