Counterfactual host Kate McNeece sits down live in Ottawa with Liberal MP Patrick Weiler.
In this episode of the Counterfactual Podcast, we travel to Ottawa for our annual live episode! In this political special, we are joined by Patrick Weiler, Liberal MP for West Vancouver – Sunshine Coast – Sea to Sky Country. With MP Weiler, we discuss the Federal budget, the differences between legal advocacy and law making, and learn the behind the scenes scoop on the greenwashing amendments in Bill C-59.
00:32
Hi everyone, thanks for listening to Counterfactual. We’re very excited to bring you our annual live episode – a Counterfactual political special! – recorded in Ottawa on the eve of the CBA Competition Law and Foreign Investment Review Section’s annual Fall Conference. Because this episode was recorded live in front of an audience, please forgive any wonky audio.
If you’re interested in continuing the conversation or have an idea for a podcast topic or guest, please contact us by email at podcastcommittee@cba.org.
Thanks as always for listening. This is Counterfactual.
01:03
Kate McNeece
Hi, everyone. Thanks so much for joining us here tonight for our special political episode of Counterfactual - Live at the CBA Competition Law Conference. I'm Kate McNeece, I’m a competition lawyer at Goodmans in Toronto and your host for this evening.
I want to start off by giving a big thank you to Blake, Cassels and Graydon for hosting us in their beautiful Ottawa office. We've got a view of Parliament Hill behind us, which people listening to this can't see, but the audience here can.
And before we start, we just want to say that the views expressed on this podcast are our own and don't represent or not endorsed necessarily by Goodmans, Blakes or the Canadian Bar Association.
So, with that out of the way, I'm really pleased to be here with Patrick Weiler, Minister of Parliament for West Vancouver - Sunshine Coast - Sea to Sky Country. Patrick's represented that writing since 2019. He's a graduate of McGill University and the University of British Columbia Law School. So, M.P. Weiler, thank you so much for joining us today.
02:19
Patrick Weiler
Well, thanks so much for having me on your podcast here today. It's a pleasure to be and at Blakesin Ottawa which - I think it's it's well situated, obviously Parliament Hill is there, but I know also the office right there is the ISED office. So I think that's probably convenient to be having a competition law podcast overlooking the Ministry in charge of competition.
02:54
The ISED office, a familiar location for many of the people in this room, although for foreign investment meetings because the Bureau is in Gatineau.
So to kick us off, as competition lawyers, which, you know, many of us in the audience and many people listening are, we often deal sort of more with officials and don't get a chance to meet with people who are making the policy and making the laws. So I guess to start us off, could you tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to public office?
03:10
Patrick Weiler
Yeah, gladly. So, yeah, born and raised in West Vancouver. I come from family my mother was a counselor, an environmental activist. My father was a labor lawyer. So I've always been interested in in sustainable development and that kind of influenced where I went in my life. I ended up going to law school, studying environmental law and then articling doing work on environmental and aboriginal law.
And actually, I remember a case with a lawyer from Blakes. And I was working on the file on behalf of the city of Burnaby and the Coldwater Nation, and he was representing Trans Mountain in the case.
And he also happened to be the commissioner of my football pool. So we had some interesting discussions, but some of the work that I was doing, I was very frustrated with a lot of the environmental laws as they were written at the time.
This was the Stephen Harper had made a bunch of changes to environmental assessment in 2012. And I realized, you know, I could be in cases like this, I could argue these cases be successful and get a different interpretation of the law. But if I really wanted to make a change quickly, I needed to get involved in, rather than suing the government to actually be part of the government.
And so that kind of put that idea in my mind to get involved in politics and I did some work for a liberal MP named Jonathan Wilkinson, and hat was very interesting. And my predecessor in my riding in West Vancouver - Sunshine Coast - Sea to Sky Country decided not to run. And she reached out, as did the local Liberal association, to see if I'd be interested in running and I decided to take the plunge. And the rest is history.
05:05
Kate McNeece
Now here you are, six, seven years later?
Patrick Weiler
A little more than six years now.
Kate McNeece
OK, so you're a lawyer by training and you've talked a little bit about why you wanted to start making laws instead of just working on enforcement of them. But can you speak a little bit more about what that transition was like? How did you go from interpreting or applying or arguing law to making it? And how has your legal training been an asset and what did you have to sort of shift in your thinking?
05:30
Patrick Weiler
Yeah, so it this kind of work is very different than I thought it would be. I thought it would all be kind of debating, drafting, laws, things like that. But but actually, that's like a very small part of the job, probably less than 5%, I'd say is that. The vast majority is constituency work, like working on behalf of people, helping them with individual files, whether that's immigration, tax-related issues, helping different organizations in the community to help get funding for projects or otherwise make a difference. And then all the partisan side, the fundraising, the canvassing and all of that.
You know, I ended up really liking that part of the stuff a lot more than I thought I would. But it's definitely an asset when you are spending the time doing that. Because I think probably in Parliament, probably about like 30 to 40% of MPs do have a legal background, which I think is definitely helpful. But the vast majority of people don't have that background. It's good to have people from all different walks of life. But when it comes to - when you're trying to pass new laws or debate laws, we'll all get information from our respective parties about what the law means. And a lot of people will just take that as the gospel.
But to understand, to be able to interpret that and understand how to look at it properly, I think is a really helpful thing for you to be a little bit more independent on understanding if that's consistent with your values, but also the values of the folks that you represent. So that's been very helpful for me. And it's it's made it a little bit easier for me to be a little bit more active in a lot of the discussions when we're debating laws, changing laws. And now also with my own private member's bill that's being debated, too.
07:22
Kate McNeece
So just in in that vein a little bit, a lot of our work deals with officials, civil service, not necessarily the political side. Often they're kind of working on one law and they're experts in that that one law, as are we. So if we're thinking about it, for those of us who are more interested in the policy side of things, in speaking with the political level or advocating for changes to the law, how can we tailor our advocacy to an audience of someone like you rather than someone who's really in the in the weeds?
07:51
Patrick Weiler
Well, I'd say every MP is different. People will have different experience, background and interest. and I think the most important thing to know is the person that you're talking to. Maybe you know that they're very interested in this area and they have experience.
But you most of the time, you're being pulled in a million different directions. And so you first need to explain why they should care about it. Try to connect it to something that matters to them, their constituents and the riding. And I think it's helpful when we're talking about competition because these are things that are or can be directly related to affordability, can be directly related to the economy. And so figure out a way of showing why that person should care first.
But I think just generally, like a lot of guidance as a lawyer is be able to speak to a layperson. And that's really what a lawyer will be in this. Like they may have some advice that they're getting, but I think you really need to go back to basics about why they should care.
And that's if you're talking just to an MP, if you're talking to somebody who's a Minister, it's a different story, or someone who is a parliamentary secretary it’s a different story, or if someone is on a committee that's looking at this, whether that's the Finance Committee or the Industry Committee, they will have probably a different level of understanding. But I think first you need to establish why they care, and then you can kind of go from there. There are people that do have a background in the space. Those are the people that I would first go to talk to.
Kate McNeece
So it's a bit of a choosing your audience first - who will be open to that sort of legal or drafting type of advocacy.
09:43
Patrick Weiler
And I think the other part too is - at least a rule that I have is any constituent that wants to talk to me about something, I will have a meeting with them. And most MPs will do the same thing. And so like if it's your MP, like take advantage of that. And because that's the easiest way to talk to somebody.
10:00
Kate McNeece
Great advice.
I'm going to shift gears a little bit because, you know, today we're recording on November 19th. It is budget week here in Ottawa. So congrats. The government passed the confidence vote on Monday. And I think the BIA has now, if not been tabled, has least been released publicly.
So, if we're talking about your tenure in Parliament, you've served as a Liberal MP under two prime ministers now. How does this 2025 budget reflect the different priorities of the Carney government and the different time that we find ourselves in?
10:30
Patrick Weiler
Yeah, well, it's really both. So, first, just given the impact of the U.S. tariffs, everything has changed. You know, we have to do everything we can to drive economic development and investment. And that's what this budget is really focused on. The overall goal of driving about a billion or a trillion dollars in new investment into Canada.
So that's the first thing. Also making sure that we're protecting some of the industries that are most impacted you know steel, aluminum, automotive, lumber, that's a key part of it, as well as the issues that were always there in the background, which are affordability, which is ah probably the most important issue, depending on who you talk to right across the country.
But there’s also the dynamic of in the last government, we had this agreement with the NDP, which really, in the Liberal Party, we are a fairly big tent, we have more kind of Blue Liberals and we have kind of folks that are on the border of being NDP or Liberal. We got much more involved in a lot of social policy, which is great. You know, you think of things like the Canada Child Benefit, the child care agreement, you know, the dental care plan. These are all really important things. But in this in this budget, we wanted to protect those social programs, but find a way of reducing government spending on government and creating the conditions to drive a lot of private sector investments. So it's very much an investment focused budget, which is very important and foundational, maybe not as good on the retail side, but it's the kind of thing that we need to do given the time that we're right now.
12:07
Kate McNeece
When we were talking earlier to prepare for this panel, you flagged the difference between operational spending and capital expenditures. Could you unpack that a little bit and how the budget addresses those to really drive investment?
12:20
Patrick Weiler
Absolutely. So this is the kind of framework that some other countries have been using for a while. So the UK has been using this for a good amount of time. But looking at our spending, we had been going up about 8% year over year on the spending on government. And the size of the public service had grown substantially. A lot of that was to deliver programs during COVID where we had to create these programs in a small matter of time out of nowhere.
But it had gotten to a point where it wasn't sustainable. And so this budget is reducing that to 1% this year and trying to balance that over the next three years and really to push that that funding in the fiscal room that we have to drive investment. So that's really the big change.
13:06
Kate McNeece
I think another “hot topic”, at least, this comes up a lot in our foreign investment work for those of us who are in the bar, we talk a lot about Canada's economic sovereignty and natural resources and simulating investment in Canada's bounty, I guess, in our land while still protecting it and making sure we've got Canadian champions. Can you speak a little bit to like how the budget deals with that?
13:35
Patrick Weiler
Yeah, so the challenge that Canada has is 75% of our exports go to the US. And once those are getting tariffed, that is a massive impact to Canada. It's about a $50 billion dollars impact to our GDP. The focus of really the last six months has been first to get rid of the barriers we have within Canada to our trade.
We've done that through legislation to get rid of some of the regulatory barriers we have, and we're really pushing the provinces to step up to the plate and do more there. But our infrastructure is all set up north-south, like everything from like our transportation infrastructure to our electricity transmission infrastructure. And so this budget is really making sure that we can build east-west a lot better, build up our ports, our airport infrastructure, roads, railways to be able to access new markets and leverage the 50 plus free trade agreements that we have with other countries in the world. So there's is a lot of investment that's put on the table for that.
14:32
Kate McNeece
We've talked sort of broadly about investment, a little bit about affordability. A lot of those impact competition law or are impacted, I suppose, by competition law. But the only specific provision in the budget about competition law is - I think there's two amendments proposed to the Competition Act, one of which is clarifying the definition of the new greenwashing provision, one of which is rescinding private actions for greenwashing or environmental claims.
You were on the industry committee that considered Bill C-59, of which both of those provisions were a part when it passed in 2024. Can you speak a little bit like what's your view on this quick shift in approach on greenwashing? What's with this the seesaw and how that's addressed?
15:17
So there is one other change to the Competition Act related to to banking in this budget, but the key one is on greenwashing. And as folks in the room and listening will probably know, there was a whole sea change that was done to the Competition Act. A lot of them that were actually done on the floor on the Finance Committee on my birthday last year.
And yeah, one of the key ones in in the bill that we had was to create, to bring in new changes for greenwashing on products so that if you say your product is something you'd have to be able to prove it. And I think that is pretty non-controversial. But the other piece that we decided to bring forward, and it was partially because of some advocacy coming from different lawyers, is looking at the business claims done overall by companies. Something that is a big issue in my riding where I have an LNG export facility. And LNG generally in BC, you would see cross buses, it'd be plastered like LNG is going to reduce emissions.
Which is kind of a crazy thing to say in my mind. And no company's ever been able to prove this, but this was a way of being able to market their goods to get public acceptance of that. and it's one that I hear constantly frustration from constituents on it. So, you know, given this opportunity, we're opening up the Competition Act. We thought like, what can we do about this? And ideas came forward. And so to your earlier question, it's a good time to reach out to MPs that are going to be considering that on the committee and at the time I was on the finance committee.
So we decided, I worked with a couple of the opposition members and put forward an amendment to tackle this issue and to ensure that those claims are going to be able to be verified and to use a certain standard that I thought at the time would not be that controversial, given the plethora of internationally recognized standards there are for companies to choose from, um to be able to verify that.
But in the tyear and a half since that's been put into place, there has been some confusion that's in the market. The hope was that some of that would be clarified by the Competition Bureau. But some of the feedback that's been received so far is that um it is leading to some investors restricting some of the disclosure that's out there.
There is disagreement out there, whether that's because of these provisions or whether it's because what was being put out there before was just not truthful.
My personal view is that a lot of this is actually the Act intended or operating as it's intended.
So with the changes that have been put forward, to remove the internationally recognized methodology part and to take away the third party private actions. I think that's a mistake personally because the Competition Bureau only has so much resources to enforce this Act and we are putting a lot of asks on the Competition Bureau.
As a government, we're really looking to the Bureau to help with affordability and also these companies that are doing the right thing and you know realistically taking action on environment and climate. And so my hope is that through this process, at the very least, the third party cause of action is going to be maintained because it already has to meet such a high standard to be in the public interest. There's no – I mean, you can get costs from these actions, but you can get a judgment. So I think there has been a lot of advocacy from some of these groups. A lot of it, my view, not in in good faith.
19:20
Well, I mean, I think, you know, splitting the difference and keeping the clarification on internationally recognized methodology, which I think has, you know, I don't want point fingers, it has caused a great deal of confusion amongst our bar and the business community. So getting rid of that, I think will help a lot just by making it clear that, you know, there are a number of Canadian standards that that will be sufficient or that you don't have to worry about what's internationally recognized, what's international.
But I agree, I mean, I think I'm on record in a number of venues saying that I think we should have more litigation so that we all know what the law is. And I'll say it again on this episode of Counterfactual that I'm all for private actions.
And I agree. I think we have, you know, the leave test is tough. I don't think we all know what the public interest standard means yet, but hopefully, it's before the Tribunal right now, hopefully we'll get some guidance on that. And, beyond that, in the case of vexatious litigants or people who aren't really bringing legitimate claims, we also have just pleading standards that can help turf out some of those problems. That's my view.
Beyond the greenwashing, I know, the budget bill has some pretty limited touches on Competition Act. Can we expect additional legislative action on competition law, do you think?
20:30
Patrick Weiler
Too soon to tell? I think it's too soon to tell right now. I don't get the sense that there's like a big competition piece of legislation coming. I mean, know we've done some major reforms on that, and also foreign investment law and in recent years. So I think there, there is something to be said for seeing how those changes are going to operate before introducing new ones right now. And whether it's greenwashing or other changes, people are still trying to sort out what that looks like in practice.
Making sure that we have clarity and certainty for investment is really important. I'd say adjacent to the greenwashing stuff, the things that we are working on right now are introducing much better sustainable finance measures like taxonomy on green and transition investments, having mandatory climate reporting. So those are kind of adjacent to that. And those are things that are going to be coming in the next year.
I don't anticipate large-scale competition changes coming, but you never know. Things can happen, and whether even if it's not a separate bill. There are times, like we have with the Budget Implementation Act that was tabled yesterday, where you can fit that in with a big piece of legislation and 600 other pages of legislative changes.
21:40
Kate McNeece
Just hide it in there. So last question on competition law, before we get to some local issues and some of your legislative priorities. When we were talking about this earlier, you said that you think the government is considering a more hawkish approach competition law issues. And can you talk a little bit about what you mean by that and what we can expect going forward?
22:07
Patrick Weiler
Yeah. Well, I mean, I'd say it's not necessarily like a major shift from what we've had in in recent years, but I think it's, I'd say it's moving the needle slightly. It's number one, we need to consider the era that we're in right now and the industries that are being deeply impacted by the tariffs. And so all those decisions on competition are going to be focused on making sure we're protecting jobs in Canada right now, where there is a lot of uncertainty for many people.
But it's also making sure on those areas where we, you know, the actions on from the Bureau and in competition law are not going to affect jobs, that we are going to be take a stronger stance. And I think a good example of that is on telecommunications. So obviously there was the recent CRTC decision ah to provide more access to broadband for TELUS in Eastern Canada, which pretty clearly is something that'll be of benefit to consumers, providing more competition and reducing prices. I would say if you know this decision taken a few years ago, there might be action from cabinet to overturn it, because we'd seen things like that.
And these decisions are inherently political and the advocacy calling on the government to overturn that decision was pretty significant. Someone that lives in you know and in in the Pacific and the West, that was something that was very frustrating. So I'm glad we made that decision.
But you know that also follows a number of decisions we made providing better access to spectrum for a lot of companies. It's actually led to a lot of the cell phone price is coming down. So I think when you're talking about areas like that, you are are going to see the government take a stronger role. And so I would think of all those other sectors that that we need more competition and taking action isn't going to reduce or threaten jobs in Canada that you're going to see more of that in some years. And, you know, the other competition changes on banking is a good example of that.
24:05
Kate McNeece
Fair point. So maybe less kind of hawkish enforcement necessarily, but more finding opportunities to simulate competition across highly concentrated industries.
Patrick Weiler
Well, I mean, the enforcement, that that'll be up to the Bureau and they operate independently. So we will take no position in that.
24:23
Kate McNeece
So a this is a great segue. You mentioned a couple of kind of affordability or consumer issues that are relevant to your riding. Are there any other issues that come to mind when you're thinking about competition, productivity, affordability, these really key issues that really come up with your constituency?
24:39
Patrick Weiler
Yeah, I mean, they're all - affordability issues are consistent across the country and it's no different in my riding. See, my riding is probably much less affected by tariffs than other areas because the predominant industry in my riding is tourism. and we're having the second best tourism season we've ever or tourism year that we've ever had as a country because we still have not as many, but you know good amount of Americans coming and Canadians are traveling. So that's great for places like Whistler, Sunshine Coast and otherwise. So to a certain extent that hasn't had a major impact locally, but you know the tariffs are causing the cost of living challenges and everybody is concerned.
All governments are concerned about the drop in revenues right now. And so we need to increase productivity across the board. We're seeing a big focus right now on housing, which in my view is the biggest challenge we have in the country overall. We've got to build more modular and prefabricated to get things built quicker, but also making sure that we're going to drive a lot of revenue from the natural resource sector to your earlier point. And a big focus of this government is on driving major projects And a big focus of those have actually been in BC, more so than any other province.
You know, there's been announcements of LNG products, but more than that, it's really on the critical mineral sector, where we've got huge mineral resource wealth that hasn't necessarily been been accessed the way that it can. So there's a big focus on that right now as well, because the federal government's running massive deficits, as is the provincial government. And so that is really the overriding focus for everybody to make sure that we're going to be in a position where we can maintain the programs that everybody relies on.
26:25
Kate McNeece
Absolutely. I know you talked about your longtime history in environmental advocacy. Do you think there are key policies that you would be pursuing to promote Canada's environmental leadership or any sort of environmental issues that rise to the top in your riding?
26:39
Patrick Weiler
Yeah. I'll pick a local issue because that's my private member's bill. This is something that it matters very much locally. It's not necessarily a national issue, but back in 2015, there was a major oil spill in Vancouver where a company was, or sorry, a ship rather, spilled oil into Vancouver Bay for about two days.
And they were found never to be liable for it, because the Environmental Protection Act and the way the court interpreted it was a very weird interpretation. You had to prove that the company deliberately dumped into the ocean. And so it created a lot of uncertainty in that legislation.
So my bill is to make it a strict liability offense to deal with that. And the other part of my bill is to deal with a coastal issue, but especially a BC issue where in 2019, we finally prohibited people abandoning their boats.
And people could just abandon their boat anywhere and it wouldn't matter, no liability. So we made it an offense to abandon a boat. But what people did to get around it is they would essentially transfer their boat to someone that had no means.
And given the housing crisis we have, we have a lot of vulnerable people that ended looking for a place to live and living in unseaworthy boats, which is a major safety risk. I have had people that have drowned in my riding, being in these boats.
It’s a major issue with marine pollution and nuisance to neighbors. So my legislation requires now when yo're selling a boat to take certain steps to ensure that the person you are selling it to has the ability to maintain it, to deal with an issue that is incredibly frustrating for local folks and at times tragic as well. So we just got introduced in September, had the first hour of debate a couple weeks ago, and I’m hopeful that it will be passed in the spring.
28:39
Kate McNeece
That sounds like a good example, I think, of identifying a problem, probably you know bringing it, some stakeholders bringing to you and getting a legislative fix.
We’re running out of time, but I think we do have time to answer a couple of questions if there are any from the crowd.
28:55
Audience Question
So you spoke about obviously environments and it's important to you. Plenty of people thought PM Carney had certain objectives or priorities with respect to the environment. And I'm just wondering, without putting too much on the hot seat, how you feel PM Carney's credentials on environment have been brought to this government and whether you're happy, see room for improvement, what more could be done?
29:19
Patrick Weiler
Yeah, I mean, so I don't think there's anybody as any prime minister that understands issues of environment and climate change. in Canada's history more than than than Mark Carney.
And, you know, he's been a global advocate in this, both at the the Bank of Canada, England, and and through the UN, and also through his work in the private sector. So that hasn't gone away. I think right now – we’re working through a period of crisis right now. And the big focus right now has been on doing everything we can to support people and keep the economy afloat.
But that that doesn't mean that we're stopped the fight on climate. And in the budget, we have a climate competitiveness strategy that really underlines how we can frame and advance on climate action in a way that's going to grow the economy. Because the things are absolutely not inconsistent.
But it's really a focus on those areas that, where we can reduce emissions at the lowest cost and drive investment in economic growth. And so, you know, it is perhaps moving away from some things that that the regulatory approach where they're higher costs and relying on things like industrial carbon pricing, which is the more efficient ways of reducing emissions. So I would say it would be an incomplete grade at this point, but I trust the Prime Minister and his credentials and the folks that I sit in caucus with where this is a critical issue because Canadians care about it.
And I know in my riding, this is always one of the most important issues for folks. So that's not going away. And I can see the impact of the transition creating jobs in my riding. Like there's, you know, a billion dollar direct air capture, carbon capture company in my riding. There are companies that are producing renewable energy. There's opportunities for geothermal. There's mass timber. Like there's so many opportunities that are there for us to seize. And I know the Prime Minister gets that. It's about making sure that we have the type of environment to take advantage of that. And I'm confident that we're going to get there.
31:36
Kate McNeece
Well, thank you. Thank you, MP Weiler, for coming out and speaking to us today. This was a great conversation and a nice insight into the view from the other side of bench, the room - what do you sit behind in Parliament? Anyway, this is where I... the house, yeah. On the other side the house. This is where my Canadian civics fails me. Anyway, thank you, everyone, for coming. This is Counterfactual.
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