Budget Provisions: Budget Concerns

National Energy Board Dept: Bill C-38, introduced in the House last week, calls itself, innocuously, "An Act to implement certain provisions of the budget tabled in Parliament on March 29, 2012 and other measures." The bill does implement certain budget provisions, it is true: for example, the controversial changes to Old Age Security. But "and other measures" rather understates matters - to understate the matter, according to Montreal Gazette. The environmental chapters are the most extraordinary. Along with the new act, they give cabinet broader power to override decisions of the National Energy Board, shorten the list of protected species, and abolish the Kyoto Protocol Implementation Act - among "other measures." For much of this the first public notice was its inclusion in the bill and you know, this is the sort of thing people used to make quite a bit of a fuss over. The bill runs to more than 420 pages. It amends some 60 different acts, repeals a halfdozen, and adds three more, including a completely rewritten Canadian Environmental Assessment Act. It ranges far beyond the traditional budget concerns of taxing and spending, making changes in policy across a number of fields, from immigration among other changes, it erases at a stroke the entire backlog of applications under the skilled-worker program , to telecommunications opening the door, slightly, to foreign ownership , to land codes on native reservations. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.