Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
Thank you so much to the witnesses.
I guess the first thing I would say is that I listened very intently to Minister O'Regan. We certainly appreciate the fact that he did come to our committee today. He spoke of the 140 million gallons of crude going through Line 5 daily. Then he spoke about 2,100 trucks and 800 railcars to bring such across. He said that the road to net zero goes straight through our borders. He went on to say that the supply chains will adjust themselves.
It really concerns me. In my fantastic riding of Essex we rely very heavily on our automotive industry, on our supply chain, as the minister spoke to, and on our manufacturing and those types of things. I really found it ironic when he said that the road to net zero goes through our borders. Well, the truth of the matter is, Mr. Chair, that it does go through our borders. When we can't move people across our borders, that's equally a major issue.
It just speaks specifically to Line 5. If we don't have petroleum coming across to Canada and going back to the States and servicing...then we don't have an auto industry; we've lost the manufacturing industry; and we're not putting food on the table.
I'm a really no-nonsense kind of guy. My question, specifically, is who do we need to contact in the U.S. to get this done once and for all? Is there a specific person? Is there a specific agency? What can we do? What can this committee do to create magic to really get this resolved? Without that, we are going to be losing. We've already lost, by the way, friends, many fantastic manufacturing jobs and businesses. People don't know where to go. We can move product but we cannot move people across the border. Who do we have to get to as fast as we possibly can to get that job done?