Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to rise in the debate on a subject that I believe needs much more debate than what we were able to accomplish here today. Judging by many of the comments that were made by my colleagues from the Conservative Party, they should be taking a good primary course on the development of the tar sands to understand how these tar sands actually are constituted and what these tar sands mean as they are developed.
Mr. Speaker, having said that, I will be sharing my time with the member for New Westminster—Coquitlam. He is an excellent new member of Parliament who understands completely the ecological system of the west coast, and I trust he will carry that message forward here today.
In 2007, in response to her constituents, environmental groups such as the Dogwood Initiative and the Western Canada Wilderness Committee, the member for Victoria, who unfortunately cannot make a speech here today, tabled a motion to ban tanker traffic in the Dixon Entrance, Hecate Strait and Queen Charlotte Sound. I remember her telling me how shocked she had been when paddling in Prince William Sound, years after the Exxon Valdez disaster, she saw there were still remnants of crude oil gummed onto the rocks.
When introducing her motion in 2007, she said that it was time to end the ambiguity, that there was a simple fix to make certain this would never happen again, and that was to formalize the moratoria.
That is what were are here for today.
My purpose here today is to talk about an area of concern that I have. I live downstream from the development of the Athabasca tar sands. I have lived there most of my life. I share with many other community members the concerns that we have over the rampant expansion of these tar sands. Having said that, I recognize the importance of this resource to Canada. I recognize that this resource will be there and producing bitumen for 100 years. That is what is going to happen. That is the nature of the Athabasca tar sands.
We have to face up to that and try to make those tar sands the very best for Canada that we can. That is our purpose as well, when we stand in this Parliament as the New Democratic Party. We have had the opportunity on many occasions to tell the House that. Our opposition to bad management of the tar sands is just that. Let us get on to good management of the tar sands and we will solve some of the issues that we have with that, and we will protect my constituents living downstream from those same tar sands.
Right now the tar sands are at about 1.4 million barrels a day. They are expecting that this will rise by the middle of the next decade to almost three million barrels a day. Those barrels of bitumen need upgrading. Every single one of those barrels needs a very complex process, requiring expensive installations in the order of billions of dollars to make that happen.
In this world right now, we are considering exporting that bitumen from Canada with the net value per barrel, confirmed to me today by the CAPP, Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, representative in our meeting, in the neighbourhood of $20 to $30 a barrel. That is the value to the Canadian economy for every single barrel that is upgraded in this country.
When we talk about shipping a million barrels a day of bitumen out of this country, we are talking about a net loss to the Canadian economy every year of $10 billion. If the Conservative government cannot understand the nature of that impact on our economy, then I do not know where it thinks it has some kind of hold on the economy. It does not, if it does not understand that this is not the proper thing to do for Canada, to export bitumen out of this country.
Why is the government exporting the bitumen? Why does it want to export it down to the Gulf of Mexico? It is because the U.S. right now is in a political battle with Venezuela, and the heavy oil that was brought from Venezuela to the Gulf of Mexico is no longer something that the U.S. desires. It is not something Venezuelans want to do for the U.S. if we have a problem there.
These large upgraders in the Gulf of Mexico region are now a cheap alternative for the multinational companies to bring our bitumen from the tar sands down to the Gulf of Mexico and upgrade it there. That is what is driving that move, not value for the Canadian economy.
When we think of exporting bitumen to China, what will happen in China? China will set up upgraders there at a cost of billions of dollars. We will establish a supply link that delivers raw bitumen with huge investments at the other end and huge pressure on us to continue to make that the staple of that industry, moving raw bitumen.
This is not something we can just pick up and give up. What are we going to do for the years we are going to establish another? Will China stand around while we build another upgrader so that in the future the bitumen is not available for its upgrader? No. Once we build a pipeline to the west coast and start shipping bitumen, Canadians will be struck with that for 100 years. That is the future we will see for our children, which is not appropriate.
What we need to think about is what we use our bitumen for? Right now in Canada conventional oil is declining in production. According to Natural Resources Canada, 1.5 million barrels a day was the total in 2006. It is predicting it down to about 750,000 barrels by 2020. Canada will have a less secure oil supply. Transferring bitumen out of the country will not help Canada's energy security.
Right now we are importing one million barrels of oil a day from the Middle East. The oil is put in a tanker in the Middle East and it is sent over to Canada. We put the raw bitumen in the tanker and we send it over to China. Is there some consistency to what we do as Canadians? Is there any sense in what we are proposing for ourselves? For five years I have been standing in Parliament asking and pleading with the government to develop a national energy strategy that can deliver for Canadians. Instead, we get action like this.
The government is continuing to allow multinational oil companies to set the tune for the direction and future of Canadians. What a disgrace. Why does the government not get onboard with most of the industry in this country, most of the Canadian companies, the chief executives who have come out for a national energy strategy and do the work for Canadians and produce a national energy strategy? If it were to do that, it would realize very quickly that a good Canadian company like Enbridge, in the absence of any direction from the federal government, is moving ahead with a project that is not in Canada's interests. When will that happen? When will the government wake up, smell the roses and get on with a national energy strategy so all of these issues can be properly debated and properly put in context for Canadians?
It would deliver jobs and energy security for Canadians. Those are real things that Canadians want but the government is not delivering on them. It is blindly going along with every whimsical project that will change the nature of our country without doing its homework. It is a disgrace. This sort of debate, which we had to plead for and had to use up our opposition day for, should be an intelligent, careful debate with industry and stakeholders across the country so we can come to some conclusions about the nature of our energy supply.
If the government does not do that, it should be thrown out at the next election because it is really doing nothing for Canadians.