—with 80,000 workers. Congratulations on that. I know that was a big coup for you.
You have a large number of union members in Alberta. I like to say that I represent more union members than anybody else in the House of Commons, more than probably all of them combined, I'd like to say, but I know that's not true.
I just know there are a lot of union members up there, because I was one once and most of my family have been. It's very important to union members in relation to the continuation of the oil sands and the oil sector generally. That's why I want to talk a little bit to Ms. Kenny specifically.
I do want to say, Mr. Whyte, that I was very impressed with something you said. I think it illustrates what's going on in Fort McMurray and generally across the busy places in Canada, which is that skilled jobs cannot be there without unskilled jobs to support them. I can't tell you how true that is in Fort McMurray. We have hotel rooms and hotel floors that close, restaurants that close Mondays, Fridays and Saturdays because people can't get employees, so what happens? Nobody goes there. We can't get skilled workers to come because the quality of life is so bad.
Ms. Kenny, can we talk just briefly about pipelines? I'm a big believer in pipelines, because I see 500 or 600 train cars going to Vancouver, crossing over roads. That's six or seven separate cars. I know they were having problems back in the 1990s and in the early 2000s with trains. Now we have more trains full of oil going down there than ever before. We all know what happens if those trains are not treated properly and the safety aspects are not taken into consideration.
We also have a lot of trucks. I understand there are about 110 to 120 trucks a day that go to Vancouver airport with jet fuel, because we have no capacity to do that in Canada; they're coming from the United States. We're discounting our oil by $30 million to $50 million a day, which by my calculation is for sure somewhere around a new school every day in Canada that we could afford to build if we had pipeline capacity to the west coast.
Can we talk about how great pipelines are compared to trucks and rail for Canadians?
We don't have a lot of time, but I know you could spend a long time on it.