Thank you, Mr. Chair, for the opportunity to speak to this committee.
My name is Roland LeFort. I am a miner here in Fort McMurray. I've been here for 30-some years. I'm also currently president of Unifor Local 707A. We represent the workers at Suncor Energy, with more than 4,000 members. On behalf of those members I bring greetings, and also on behalf of our national president Jerry Dias and the more than 300,000 members of Unifor.
In my brief presentation today I want to focus mostly on the development of the oil sands, because I believe that the future of oil and gas is right here in Fort McMurray, for sure.
After reading some of the questions that might be on the theme for today, I think the discussion should be a little bit broader. I think we need to look more at answering what the development of this resource could do for our communities for the future, rather than just what it is doing now. When I talk about future, I am talking about the long term, of course. I believe that our discussion should be mostly centred around sustainability. It can't just be about a yes or no situation; we need to talk about how we develop this resource in a sustainable fashion.
I must say right off the bat that I believe in the science of climate change and think that science is going to be a game changer for us, unless we do our stuff properly.
While we can't argue that the development of the oil sands has not brought prosperity and economic growth to people, communities, and indeed our nation, I can't help but think about the fate of some communities that at one time were prosperous and were suddenly decimated by the collapse of the sector that sustained them. I think of many communities along the east coast after the loss of the fisheries; I think of those communities across Canada left nearly vacant after closures of paper mills; I think of cities like Sudbury and Hamilton and others, striving today to find alternatives for the depletion of the manufacturing sector. I see the same fate for communities like Fort McMurray and others, if we don't change the course we're on.
What we believe the nation needs today more than ever is a strategy for energy. We have a vast resource, yet today we seem to be challenged on how best to position ourselves to take advantage of it.
There only seem to be two positions in the argument on oil sand development. One, by industry and by government, is to develop it without too much intervention. People would say take it while the taking is good. The second position is clearly a position that says abandon development and just leave it in the ground.
The problem is that the latter seems to be gaining a lot of momentum. That latter position is likely to win unless we can come together to propose an alternative position, one that we could say would be sustainable development.
While we're busy today trying to convince Canadians that the best solution is pipelines going to the south and the west, we haven't really bothered to see the reaction of the societies in those directions. We see clearly today the reaction of the American people in their opposition to the Keystone XL, and we saw some reaction in Europe when we started talking about accessing Europe from our west coast. I can assure you that we'll see societies from all nations react in the same fashion, as I witnessed several years ago when participating in the climate change conference in Durban, South Africa.
Today we seem to be putting a lot of faith on the Asian market, but I can tell you, from the same conference, that the presentation made to us from the Chinese government was showing them on a much different trajectory from one we would think is good for us.
In fact, they were projecting reductions in fossil fuels and reductions in greenhouse emissions by 2020. Their proposal included going to nuclear energy and changing their transportation. I think we can say that we've witnessed last week in China—and Bejing especially, a city being shut down by smog—that their plan is going to be put forward with some kind of strength, I would suggest.