Merci beaucoup.
Thank you very much for coming today. I hail from northern Alberta, the oil sands country, and it's a pleasure to be here. I often visit Montreal and I very much enjoy it.
I think all members and guests here today would agree that when you manage an economy as large as Canada's, you must look at having both a long-term vision and a short-term vision. Indeed, I would suggest that the short-term vision was the $45 billion in the economic action plan and the other stimulative measures that our government put forward in 2006 and since that time.
The FCM, the Federation of Canadian Municipalities, identified a $123 billion deficit at that time. Of course, they encouraged the $45 billion being leveraged between the provinces and municipalities, to get somewhere in the neighbourhood of $123 billion. All of that stimulus money, by the way, hasn't been spent yet. In fact, much of it hasn't finished, and much of it hasn't been paid, but it is in the process now. Of course, that will give us a short-term boost in jobs, as well as a long-term increase in the quality of life.
I think that's very important, as are the tax cuts. I don't know if anybody read the Montreal Gazette this morning, but we have now received from Forbes magazine the number one ranking in the world for business investment. If you read the article, it clearly indicates that is the result of our having the lowest taxes in the G-8 and G-20. So I would suggest that the long-term outlook is going to give us a lot of jobs in the future.
My remarks here are really more of a speech, it appears, but I will advise all members here who don't recognize it.... You're invited to my home too. I've lived there for 45 years, since the time there were 1,500 people in Fort McMurray. Nonetheless, what I will advise members of is the infrastructure deficit that still exist across the country. I don't think there's any greater infrastructure deficit than in my home. If you want to know how long we wait in lineups, it's three to four hours to go 30 kilometres. We have the most dangerous highway in the country right now, Highway 63, which takes some people from this area, some people from across Canada, very often--in fact, monthly.
So I know what infrastructure deficits are, I can assure you. I think this government is doing a very good job in relation to business investment and infrastructure. We actually put $150 million into the twinning of that highway, which hasn't been done yet, but I'm hoping it will be done very soon.
I do want to premise my question by indicating that I--and all Albertans, I think--recognize that Quebec funded the west for many years. In fact, up until the middle of the last century, we needed Quebec to support us. They did so, and we appreciate that, because your economy was so rich with manufacturing. But today, 26% or 27% of the TSX, for instance, is from oil sand companies. We employ somewhere in the neighbourhood of 5,000 Quebeckers, 120,000 people across the country—and that number is going to rise to over 200,000.
We have a dilemma in northern Alberta and a dilemma in Canada, in that there are people from outside this country who continue to fearmonger about the oil sands being environmentally unfriendly. As a person who's lived there my whole life and raised my children there, I can assure you that is not the case. Less than 1% of the boreal forest is disturbed, and 100% of that forest is going to be reclaimed. In fact, just a little while ago, the founder of Greenpeace indicated that the reclaimed land was going to be better than the original land.
The question I have for you, seeing that we are a large payer of the bills across the country right now.... And we have no problem doing that, as together, we're clearly stronger united than separated—all of us. But how do we deal with these fearmongers who are receiving profits individually and as organizations, profits that are clearly dependent on their fearmongering and spreading of untruths? You may wonder why I'm asking this question, but clearly, as a country, we need to keep the oil sands going in order to fund projects across the country, such as new bridges, and repairs, to deal with the infrastructure deficit.
How do we deal with that as a country and make sure we take steps to stop them?