I think one number is really telling. Only a few years ago about two-thirds of bitumen extracted in Alberta was upgraded in the province before being exported for sale. That number has collapsed to about 50%, and by the Alberta government's own estimates—according to testimony they gave before the Northern Gateway Pipeline hearings—in very short order, in the next 10 years or so, we could be looking at a situation where only about 26% of our bitumen is upgraded.
This represents a huge lost opportunity in terms of job creation, and as one of the other witnesses, the woman from New Brunswick, pointed out, when you build an industrial plant like a refinery, it doesn't just create employment for people in that particular refinery; there are all sorts of spinoffs. Refineries and upgraders have huge supply chains, and they also—as she pointed out—have these big turnarounds and maintenance every year that create almost as much work for tradespeople on an ongoing basis as they do for operations people. But if you don't build the plant, if you don't build the upgrader, if you don't build the refinery, all those opportunities are lost.
What we're afraid of is that with the current approach to development, which is focused almost exclusively on bitumen export rather than value adding, we're looking at an historic lost opportunity, not just for Alberta but for Canada.
It's true that even the rip-it-and-ship-it approach that we're currently looking at creates jobs, but we're saying we could create that many more if we were to move up the value ladder rather than down. The same is true of revenue generated through royalties and taxes. Why accept a half loaf when we could have a full loaf?