Natural Resources committee  Yes, certainly. In its entire history, one of the things that Canada has tried to do is position itself as an independent country, but that's very difficult on the North American continent, obviously. There's always been a concern here: are we just simply a kind of branch plant,

Natural Resources committee  I think that's one of the things that I'm hearing, that I'm saying and a number of people are saying is that there are real jobs at stake here in terms of if we do the refining ourselves, as opposed to effectively exporting jobs. One of the ways of protecting Canadian workers and

Natural Resources committee  In many ways, actually, everybody who has been to Fort McMurray knows it's quite unique. It's like a unique little economy within the province of Alberta. One of the problems for other municipalities—and for the provincial government and Albertans as a whole—is that it tends to

Natural Resources committee  I don't have an exact figure on it, but from some of the earlier testimony here we can see that certainly when you have a finished product, you're going to get a higher value for that. I referred earlier to the issue of staples production. Of course these are highly capital-inten

Natural Resources committee  Thank you. Good morning, Mr. Chair and members of the committee, and also to the other participants on this panel today. I want to thank the chair and the committee for this opportunity to present on this very important topic. I think my comments will be found to actually comp