Supporters failed to get the bill on the House agenda before Christmas break, delaying it for at least another six weeks
REGINA — A last-ditch attempt to get Bill C-234 on the House of Commons agenda before a winter break failed Dec. 15.
Conservative MP Garnett Genuis moved a motion for Parliament to sit Dec. 18 to push the bill through after a longer-than-expected delay in the Senate. However, the vote required unanimous consent and some MPs opposed it.
Dec. 15 was the last day of the sitting and the scheduled return is Jan. 29, 2024.
When the bill returns to the order paper, it will look far different from when members of all parties passed it earlier in 2023.
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C-234 proposed exemptions from carbon pricing for propane and natural gas used to dry grain and to heat and cool farm buildings. It contained a sunset clause of eight years so that more energy-efficient technologies could be developed.
However, it was amended twice in the Senate to remove the clause about buildings and to shorten the sunset clause to three years.
Emotions ran high during debate of this bill in the red chamber, with accusations of intimidation and bullying.
“I’m not proud of what has transpired here in the Senate chamber over the past few weeks with respect to Bill C-234,” said senator Rob Black, who is also chair of the agriculture committee. “We have failed a very important segment of our Canadian population, and I remain concerned that I have not done my job well enough in the chamber as a senator representing agriculture in Canada because that’s what I was asked to do when I was asked by the prime minister to come into the Senate.”
During third reading debate, Black said the bill is now severely flawed but had to be passed so that it could return to the Commons as soon as possible.
He said the bill will still support thousands of farmers.
Other senators said amending the bill was the right course of action.
Senator Tony Dean said carbon pricing costs farmers money but the cost to future generations is possibly greater.
“If we had passed this bill as it was originally crafted, I believe we would have weakened Canada’s strategy for achieving carbon neutrality,” he said. “Some colleagues have suggested the government has already weakened it with their exemptions for home heating oil, and I think that’s a fair argument.”
Yukon senator Pat Duncan raised concerns about heating homes in the North and said she didn’t believe C-234 was a carve-out. She supported the bill in its original form.
“What I cannot support and what angers, saddens and truly disappoints me as a Canadian, and as a voter, is that the politics have polarized this debate so deeply,” she said. “It has ceased to be about whether this is an appropriate inclusion in an exemption already granted for agriculture and has become one of political slogans and partisan politics.
“I find it especially frustrating, colleagues, because I honestly thought that in the Senate we were better than that.”
The bill passed third reading in the Senate Dec. 12.
