Thank you, Mr. Chair.
Thank you, Mr. Minister, for agreeing to participate here today.
I wanted to start with how we talk about how we're getting the relationship right. The irritants have continued here, and I'd say they're more than irritants when they affect tens of thousands of jobs. We have Keystone XL, Line 5, softwood lumber, buy American and vaccine distribution, to name a few. There are obviously a number of challenges that remain, regardless of the change of administration in Washington.
I wanted to talk first about Keystone. I have a statement here from Canada's Building Trades Unions, who say they “are dismayed by the decision made by the Biden Administration to rescind the permit for Keystone XL—a project creating more than 15,000 high-paying union jobs across Canada and the United States”.
We've heard from organized labour unions on both sides of the border that are extremely disappointed in this decision, and I think they were extremely disappointed, as we were, to hear the Prime Minister this weekend on Meet the Press on Sunday. When he was asked by the host, “Does this mean you're done asking for...are you going to stop advocating for it here?” and “Do you feel as if the Keystone pipeline is now dead?”, the Prime Minister replied, “I think it's fairly clear that the U.S. administration has made its decision on that, and we're much more interested in ensuring that we're moving forward in ways that are good for both of our countries.”
I think he made it fairly clear that he's done fighting for Keystone. Given that the decision was made based on the U.S. position on Keystone XL, the Prime Minister essentially said that fight is over.
There's now a decision that has been made by the Governor of Michigan, who is extremely close to President Biden, was considered for being his running mate and was a key cog in the wheel in the electoral college to ensure that President Biden is the president. She is very close to him. Why would the nearly 30,000 workers in Sarnia, southern Ontario and Quebec who are affected by this have any confidence that your government would fight for Line 5 jobs when Keystone XL jobs were written off as being a decision that the U.S. administration had made and were no longer worth fighting for?