Finance Committee on April 18th, 2018

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

I call the meeting to order, though there are a few members yet to come because question period went a little long.

Before I start with the witnesses, I'll just mention to committee members, as I think you're all aware, that the international travel request we made for this particular study on the proceeds of crime, money laundering, and terrorism financing went through the House last night. The dates we're looking at are from June 1 to June 8, so you know in advance to try to work your agenda to accommodate that.

Pursuant to the order of reference, we'll continue with the statutory review of the proceeds of crime and terrorist financing act. We have further witnesses here today.

Mr. Kmiec.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I have a motion that I tabled March 29, which I think is ample notice, and I intend to move it now. Just to remind the clerks—because they're looking at me, and the analysts are too—it's the one dealing with the Trans Mountain pipeline, because I had a feeling back then that there might be a suspension of the work on the pipeline. The motion I gave notice for back on March 28 was the following:

That the Standing Committee on Finance undertake a study over a period of four meetings to review the tax revenue losses to the federal government, including but not limited to royalties, personal and corporate income taxes, and levies, as well as review the fiscal impacts, including loss of business and economic activity, resulting from the construction delays of the Trans Mountain Expansion Pipeline, that the Committee review the potential long-term federal benefits, including employment opportunities that the project would generate, and that the Committee would report back to the House and make a recommendation as to whether or not the Government of Canada declare the Trans Mountain expansion project to the national advantage of Canada and invoke Section 92(10)(c) of the Constitution of Canada.

I won't read it in French because I know we have interpretation services, so I'm sure they're able to catch all of it—they're nodding to me over there. The reason I tabled the motion originally is that I was really worried that the pipeline would not be approved. It was approved in the sense that the company was given regulatory authority to deal with it and legal authority to go on with it, but it hasn't been given any political backing almost whatsoever. I'm going to draw the attention of the committee to the news release that Kinder Morgan put out on their own project. I think it has valuable information in it when it talks about the deadline they've set for themselves of May 31 and the potential paths forward that they kind of itemize and go through. In it they say:

The uncertainty as to whether we will be able to finish what we start leads us to the conclusion that we should protect the value that KML has, rather than risking billions of dollars on an outcome that is outside of our control.

To date, we have spent considerable resources bringing the Project to this point and recognize the vital economic importance of the Project to Canada. Therefore, in the coming weeks we will work with stakeholders on potential ways to continue advancing the Project consistent with the two principles previously stated.

This is a news release that they put out on the Canada Newswire on April 8, 2018. It goes into a lot of detail on what they see as the problems with the current regulatory and legal environment, because, let's face it, they're being harassed legally and through regulation by B.C.'s NDP government. That's their biggest problem. They're facing a situation where they have government approval to proceed with it, but they're being harassed through the courts and the regulatory process, and they feel that they cannot place the entire company at risk for the project.

I will mention that it was interesting to go Natural Resources' website to see what Natural Resources Canada's views are of the prospects of the energy sector. This is from Natural Resources Canada. It says here that “government revenues from energy were $12.9 billion in 2015”. What I've been saying in the parts of the country I've travelled to, including my own riding and Vaughan that I was in last week, is that we basically need, at this point, two and a half Trans Mountain pipelines to be approved and built in order to balance the budget in the future. That's where it ties it back into federal budgets. I think the revenue generated by the Trans Mountain pipeline is of immense value to the federal government because, on the Liberal side, they will be unable to meet the promises made in the 2015 election unless they see more of these projects built. This is where Trans Mountain becomes critical to actually reaching a balanced budget. In terms of those numbers, this motion speaks to figuring out what exactly, and how much value there will be to the federal coffers over the next five, 10, 15, and 20 years as the construction is completed and the pipeline comes online.

I know that the government has said—and there are no members of the government here, just government caucus members—that it's going to table legislation. I assume this will be done far before May 31, the deadline the company has set. So, they're going to table the legislation, and there's some type of financial or insurance consideration that is going to be given to Kinder Morgan.

Now that's of interest to me because I'd like to know what those considerations would be. I also think it's incumbent upon the finance committee to give advice to the government. I have only asked for four extra meetings to be assigned for this because I know that we have to get into the details of an important budget implementation bill that we have to review. You probably heard at question period that there will be a lot of questions to ask of the government about some of the estimates changes and the impact on the spending to be approved in the budget.

However, this is how important the TMX is. It is of vital importance to the federal government to ensure that this project is built, completed, and made operational and then to have more such projects happening in the future. We know there has been massive capital flight from Canada—$86 billion, the largest loss since at least 2010. These are immense numbers that hurt the attempts of the federal government to balance its own budget.

Not to be piffy, to say that the budget will be balanced and the pipeline will be built without then putting in a comma and completing the sentence by saying what you will do, how you will do it, and how you will get there.... That's the important stuff; that's what everybody wants to know. That's what the journalists are talking about.

Constituents are coming to me. I probably get now hundreds of phone calls, emails, and contacts a week through social media from people talking about the TMX pipeline, energy, and what is going on, because it involves their jobs. I come from the constituency of Calgary Shepard, in the deep southeast part of the city, where I have a lot of white-collar and blue-collar oil and gas workers.

This motion is important because we could be providing the government with vital financial information to influence the legislation it is going to be proposing before the House. Then we would be debating it, of course, but there is no way to tell which committee it will go to. I hope the government will consider, but it might not, whether it should invoke section 92.10(c) of the Constitution Act of Canada.

I did some research on this subject. I know there are constitutional law experts in Canada, so I'm not going to go through all 470-plus times that power has been used in Canada, but it has been used many times—including, I'm sure it will please the chair to know, for grain elevators. Grain elevators were in fact federalized by the federal government at one point, along with much of the work surrounding grain elevators—the bylaws, the construction, the roads, a lot of what's involved. That was news to me; I didn't know this. That would be an interesting aspect to look at.

There is also a Senate bill before the Senate, from independent, elected Alberta Senator Doug Black, that deals exactly with this matter.

I think the finance committee has a unique opportunity from the financial perspective to make a pitch to study the issue, look at the federal impact—the employment numbers, the corporate income taxes, the levies, the royalties that the federal government could be receiving—if this project is completed on time, and also if it's not, What would be the loss to Canada if this project does not go ahead; if Kinder Morgan says, because of the regulatory and court harassment it's facing from the B.C. NDP and the lack of support from the federal government, which is exactly what they've said has happened, that they will not be pursuing the project?

That's how this all ties into giving a yea or nay on the use of this part of the Constitution. If the government is going to invoke it, how should it invoke it and for what reasons should it invoke it? I think the reasons are financial. It's a benefit to members of the government caucus, I think. Here is free advice on my end that is also of benefit to the Liberal government—the ministers, the members of the executive. If they want to balance the budget, they have to see this project through, and this will be a mechanism through which to do it.

I'm only asking, as I said, for those four meetings. There are numbers available from CAPP and others on what it would look like if the project didn't go through.

One thing I want to mention is Claudia Cattaneo's view of this—she's an expert in this field—on April 5 with regard to Bill C-69. Aside from legislation, because it's not important to this motion, there is the regulatory version faced by Kinder Morgan and other projects, because it comes as a basket. The cancellation of the Kinder Morgan pipeline could precipitate others' cancelling their projects.

I think this is another avenue by which the committee through this motion could undertake a study, with four meetings, and make some recommendations to the government respecting a yea or a nay on the Constitution. Then we could have our piece on it before the government tables the legislation. They could have our view of it before that happens. I know the time is short, but it's the time that has been given to us by Kinder Morgan.

She said that “The message couldn't be clearer than in the Canadian Energy Pipeline Association's recent response to Bill C-69” that “investors have tuned out and moved to jurisdictions where governments aren't kneecapping their companies to meet commitments on climate change.” She says there's an opportunity cost involved. What is that opportunity cost? I think we could look at much of that question through this motion and then determine it.

Trans Mountain's project was announced May 23, 2012. We're almost in May 2018. It's almost six years now from the moment of announcement to the moment we're now facing, when the pipeline could be cancelled.

Some members know, of course, that I was born in Poland. We fought World War II from start to finish, I think in the same time span, and yet here in Canad we still don't have the Kinder Morgan project completed. It's startling to me that a nation-building project like this could not be done in the same timeline during which previous generations were able to fight a world war. It's stunning to me. I don't make the comparison lightly, but it's interesting to note how long it has taken the company to get to the point where they're now saying they can't proceed because there are too many regulatory and court-related burdens for them to continue.

I'm hoping that members on the opposite side will hear me out on this. I'm just going to shuffle through the examples that I want to give you. Off the top of my head, as I said, there were grain elevators; the Cape Breton Development Corporation was federalized; and the government divested Teleglobe as well.

This is a section of the Constitution that has not been used in almost 30 years. Perhaps the chair can correct me, because I know he has a long memory of things that have happened here in Parliament, but it's a section, nevertheless, that is available for use when the government wants to declare something to the national advantage.

I think it's worth our time to take four meetings to study the issue and provide recommendations to the government. That's purely on the fiscal side, to study the impact to the budget and future budget years. We could invite experts to appear before us both from Kinder Morgan, and National Resources Canada, if it has done the assessment already. We could also invite others, like Alex Pourbaix, who issued a statement basically saying that there are 200 environmental and legal conditions attached to the approval, and they've been trying to meet them over the past two years. I saw a stat put out by the British Columbia government that about 1,187 permits are required by the pipeline, although it could be 1,178, as I may be getting the last two numbers in the wrong order, and something like only 200 or 300 have been approved so far. It shows you how much more permitting there is imposed upon the company for a project that is approved by the federal government.

On behalf of my constituents, I'm interested to see this motion passed, for us to have this debate, and to hear from expert witnesses in the field who can inform us on what the financial repercussions would be of this project not proceeding. We're seeing headlines like, “As investors blast Canada's pipeline ‘gong show,’ Ottawa must take action”. That's Chris Varcoe from the Calgary Herald. In here, he has quotes from Steve Kean, the Kinder Morgan CEO, who is saying, “It's not a bluff” or a ploy but that they're seriously considering cancelling the project. There are hundreds of thousands of jobs that will be impacted, because this is product: feedstock that is moving through the pipeline. Those jobs on the back end, in production and the white-collar jobs, a lot of which are in Calgary, will be impacted directly by this. It will hurt even more of their confidence. Whatever confidence was returning will be hurt by this.

I don't think four meetings is unreasonable to set aside for a study of this motion. If you could just give me one second, I want to—

[Raj Grewal, Liberal, Brampton East, ON]

Take your time.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

Take my time? I don't want this to turn into the procedure and House Affairs committee in any way.

I'll mention some of the other examples that I have here. There was an act respecting the Montreal and Lake Maskinongé Railway Company that went into some detail for the county of Berthier on what would be included in that use of the Constitution, including things like station houses, engine houses, sidings, telegraph and telephone lines, and other works. They didn't talk about the financial considerations of why they were doing it. Those are contained in other sections of the act and the preamble. The Drummond County Railway Company and the British Columbia Dock Company used it. The City of Ottawa had it used as well, and so did the Montreal subway company, the railway act, and an act respecting grain, which is very simple, nationwide, and for grain elevators. It's all in here. It was used for the development and control of the Atomic Energy company. Again, there are lots of uses of it, and we should hear from expert witnesses on how the federal government could use this to ensure that the pipeline is built.

If you're wondering about the “how” and what you could do, I think the finance committee is in a unique position to advise the government on financial considerations, through a study that provides recommendations.

I'm going to stop talking. If you adjourn the debate, though, I'm going to take that as a no, and that you don't care about the people back home in my riding and in Calgary. I hope you give it due consideration and that you seriously consider voting for this motion. I don't think four meetings is that much to ask, and I think we could benefit a lot from figuring out the financial considerations that the federal government should take.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

The motion has been given proper notice and duly moved. It's on the table for debate.

To the witnesses, in fairness to you, a member has the right to lift a motion off the table and debate it at any time. I hope our witness from Australia, who I know was up at five o'clock in the morning in Australia to do this, understands that as well.

I have Mr. Sorbara on my list.

[Francesco Sorbara, Liberal, Vaughan—Woodbridge, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

I want to thank my colleague on the other side for lifting this motion, putting his motion forward, but I want to make a few comments about what he stated.

On Monday night we debated the TMX expansion. Our government has approved the pipeline. It's working hard to get the pipeline built. I actually had the pleasure of being in the House and debating with my colleagues from all sides in favour of the pipeline.

In January, I visited the Edmonton area. I visited the Alberta industrial heartland area and saw the great things going on there. I have been unabashedly pro-pipeline for a very long time. We need it to diminish or lessen the differential between the WCS and WTI, and then Brent, oil prices. We are losing billions of dollars a year, and that's a stated fact put out by many research economists, industry observers, and so forth.

Our Prime Minister recently went to Fort McMurray, or Fort Mac as it's commonly known, and expressed his support to the oil industry workers in Alberta. We all know that. He went to B.C. and stated that he supports this pipeline. His comments have been consistent across the board. So my point of view and our party's point of view is that this pipeline will be built. Recently the Prime Minister had a meeting with the premiers of Alberta and British Columbia, and that message was delivered.

Now, there is a time frame or a window about which a private corporation has expressed its thoughts. I'm sure the various parties are dealing with that and working hard. But at the end of day, this pipeline will be built, MP Kmiec. That's where I stand. It should be built. It should be built for all those middle-class Canadians who will be working to build the pipe, all those jobs that will be created, and all those revenues that will be gained.

If you look at what our government has done, you'll see that the $1.5 billion oceans protection plan will ensure that the coasts are protected. To personalize it, as someone who grew up in northern British Columbia until I was 19 years old, I know how beautiful those coasts are. I'm proud of our government for putting forward a plan that balances the environment and the economy. As our environment minister says, they go hand in hand.

Regarding your comments on having meetings and so forth, I don't think it's necessary. I think right now the focus of this committee is to go over the budget implementation act legislation. We have a very important study that we're undertaking right now, the five-year review of our anti-money laundering and terrorist financing act. We know what the comments of the environment minister, the natural resources minister, the Prime Minister, and the finance minister have been on the TMX pipeline. We are balancing our national interest of building this pipeline—and it will be built.

I thank you, Tom, for bringing forward this motion. I fundamentally disagree with it. I think right now the focus of this committee is fully with the things we are working on and looking at. I know that our government is hard at work to get pipelines built, whether it's the Line 3 replacement; whether it's the Pembina facility out in Prince Rupert, the propane export facility that was recently introduced; whether it's a number of polypropylene facilities that are to be built in the Alberta industrial heartland, we're going at it. We're working hard. We've brought confidence back into our regulatory process, something that you didn't mention was lost during your party's time in government.

I do respect your motion. I agree with the importance of this pipeline. I don't agree with moving forward on a study. That would not be utilizing the committee's time in a prudent manner in terms of what we have facing us and in terms of the timeline.

Those are my thoughts, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Next on my list is Ms. O'Connell.

I'm going to keep people to the essence of the motion. Let's not stray too far from the motion, so that we can get this dealt with and move on to our witnesses.

I'll go to Ms. O'Connell and then Mr. Albas.

[Jennifer O'Connell, Liberal, Pickering—Uxbridge, ON]

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

Thanks to the witnesses who are here.

I'll try to keep my comments as succinct as I can. However, I think Mr. Kmiec's rationale for motion is that he wants to see the political will, but, as Minister Carr indicated a number of weeks ago, the opposition doesn't seem to take yes for an answer.

The Prime Minister has clearly said that this pipeline will be built and that it is in the national interest. Let me quote him, because the whole reason Mr. Kmiec asked that we look at this is to engage the finance committee and the finance minister. In his speech, the Prime Minister said, “As such, I have instruct the Minister of Finance to initiate formal financial discussions with Kinder Morgan, the result of which will be to remove the uncertainty overhanging the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion project.”

Now, I fully understand and appreciate the fact that Mr. Kmiec filed his motion prior to the Prime Minister's statement, but Mr. Kmiec should find—and the people, the workers, and the Canadians across the country concerned about this pipeline should feel—that the political will is there. The comment has been made clearly. The Prime Minister and the ministers have said so time and time again in the House, and the Prime Minister directed the Minister of Finance to move forward on these discussions, which is exactly what Mr. Kmiec just asked for, his exact rationale for this study. While I appreciate his request and the rationale behind it, the government is doing it. The Prime Minister is doing it.

The other point I'd like to make is that Mr. Kmiec gave the rationale for the finance committee to consider studying this and to basically do a legal review and provide a legal opinion for the Prime Minister and the government. This is the finance committee. This is not the justice committee; this is not the committee that would provide a legal opinion. Then it's suggested that the finance committee do this review, a process that the natural resources committee would have looked at.

While I appreciate and I think Mr. Kmiec's concern and the opposition's concern for workers is real, at the end of the day, you're directing it to the finance committee, yet the Minister of Finance has already been engaged in this file from the Prime Minister. If you want a legal opinion, then it's not the finance committee that should ever be tasked with that.

Another point that Mr. Kmiec raised was the length of time since the approval of the project. The problem is—and perhaps he was looking for this information when he was looking through his documents—that one of the greatest delays was a result of the former Harper government not consulting with indigenous peoples. This is why the process had to be re-established by our government. I can appreciate the frustration about the delay, but had the process and consultation been done in the first place under the Harper government, perhaps the political uncertainty wouldn't be there. This government is committed to moving forward, and I think the Prime Minister has been quite clear in engaging the finance minister that that's exactly the intention we are moving forward with.

I think, in fairness, the motion was filed prior to that, and I think Mr. Kmiec should allow this work to be done and not have the negotiations in public, because frankly, that's would undermine the result that I think you want. I'm going trust our Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance to move forward on these discussions in the interests of Canada and not try to make this a political back-and-forth at the finance committee to establish a legal opinion. It's simply the wrong committee when we have the Minister of Finance engaged in these consultations, engaged in these negotiations with the very people he should be.

I'm quite confident in the work that the Prime Minister and the Minister of Finance will do, and I think, in fairness, Mr. Kmiec should probably hold off on this motion since, again, he tabled it prior to some of these announcements, but we are doing exactly as he is seeking.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Mr. Albas.

[Dan Albas, Conservative, Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola, BC]

Thank you, Mr. Chair, and to all of the witnesses, I'm sorry that this has broken out. However, this crisis in confidence resulted in an emergency debate on Tuesday. Although Mr. Sorbara mentioned that that was the appropriate venue for it, the unfortunate part about it is that it came to nothing.

We know that last Sunday there were four people in the room: the Prime Minister, the Premier of Alberta, the Premier of British Columbia, and the finance minister. Now the finance minister obviously has been tasked by the Prime Minister with coming up with for some sort of package. I'm not going to bear onto that end of it. I have some particular thoughts that I don't think are germane to this, and as I said, I will try to keep it to the subject. However, everything that is referred to here has a direct effect on Canada's GDP and the revenue of the Government of Canada. Given this crisis of confidence, where we see $80 billion fleeing out of that sector, I think we need to start making the case.

Now the Senate, the other place, has been discussing S-245, I believe, which is sponsored by the elected independent Senator Doug Black. They are talking about what should be the appropriate role from a legal sense. What this committee can do that no other committee in the House of Commons can do is to make that public case. More than $20 billion coming to the Government of Canada has an enormous impact and bears some scrutiny, and four meetings by us would be helpful in making that case.

There still are some places where they may not know of the nation-building potential for this project. That case has to be pursued, Mr. Chair, and I think we would actually have some recommendations to the Minister of Finance and to the general public that would have good public value.

Ms. O'Connell opened her comments by saying the opposition can't take yes for an answer. I'm just letting her know that on this motion, MP O'Connell, we will take yes for an answer.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Okay are we ready for the question?

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

No, I was on next.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

I didn't see you.

Pierre, go ahead.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Mr. Chair, yes is a word. We want steel on the ground. We want a result. This government has been in office now for two years. It has allowed exactly zero pipelines to tidewater to proceed. It has killed Energy East, which would have transported Canadian crude to Canadian refineries rather than selling Canadian crude at a discount to the States and buying it at a premium from Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. It would have created jobs for refinery workers in the east and oil workers in the west.

The government's decision to block this project is going to harm the environment because that same oil will still be produced; it will just be produced in places where there's less regulation and fewer protections for the environment, and in places where there are state-owned oil companies that fund dictatorial human rights-abusing regimes around the world. Even hard-core environmentalists who like the Prime Minister dream of shutting down the oil industry are not even achieving that; they're just moving it to faraway lands to help bankroll our enemies.

On the issue of the Trans—

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Mr. Poilievre, I think you're straying a little from the motion. We're giving a fair bit of latitude, but stick as close as you can to the motion please.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

The motion is on pipelines. I'm talking about pipelines, Mr. Chair.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

The intent of the motion is section 92(10)(c) of the Constitution and the tax revenue losses to the federal government.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

Right. We know how much we're losing as a result of not having these. We know we are losing great sums as a result of not having pipelines to reach our markets with Canadian petroleum. Right now, as a result of the lack of pipelines, we have one customer for Canadian oil—literally, one customer, because 99% of Canadian oil exports go to the United States of America.

When the Prime Minister blocks pipeline construction or fails to advance even those pipelines he claims to support, there's no one happier on planet earth than Donald Trump, because he and his economy get to continue to take our oil at a discount and in effect rip off our workers in so doing.

The question is whether the government is going to exercise its leadership under section 92(10)(c) of the Constitution, declare that this project is to the national advantage of Canada, and assume jurisdiction over all of its permitting and approvals. If the Prime Minister were determined to have this pipeline built, as he claims, then he probably would have done that by now, but he has not.

The member across the way says that the finance committee is no place to be studying pipelines, in fact, because we don't study legal matters. Well, of course, we study legal matters, Mr. Chair. We approve the budget legislation every year, which is a law, and laws are legal matters. We also study financial matters. That's why we're called the finance committee. I don't think there's a single regulatory question that would have more impact on the financial bottom line of the Canadian government than the construction of this and other pipelines, so the finance committee is an excellent place in which to do this study.

I should further add that there is nothing to stop an additional study or additional studies from going on in other committees. The natural resources committee could study it. The environment committee could study the damage the government is doing to the environment by blocking the production of clean Canadian petroleum. The human resources committee could study the increased poverty that is resulting in first nations communities from blocking these projects. All those things could still be studied elsewhere, Mr. Chair, as you grasp your gavel.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

I am, because that's not the intent of the motion.

[Pierre Poilievre, Conservative, Carleton, ON]

That does not stop us from studying what is right here in this motion.

In conclusion, I'd like to thank Mr. Kmiec for bringing this forward. He is championing the people of Calgary who live in his constituency, but don't be mistaken that while the people of Calgary will justifiably benefit if these pipelines get built, this is a national issue. There are people right across the country whose lives will be made better by the economic activity that would result from getting full market value for Canadian oil. As long as we're being ripped off by this discount price we receive for Western Canada Select, people everywhere in Canada are poorer. Everywhere.

I don't understand why the government, if it's really so committed to getting the pipeline built, would not want to explore the use of section 92.10(c) of the Constitution to achieve it. What harm would be done in studying that, and what could possibly be more urgent to study at a time like this, when we have an interprovincial crisis between the NDP governments in Alberta and British Columbia, a crisis the Prime Minister has thus far been unable to solve?

Let's bring the experts here, discuss what constitutional powers the government could execute to take this pipeline to tidewater, and pass the recommendations on quickly to the government. I think if you asked the member, Mr. Kmiec, if he was in agreement, he would probably tell you that he would be willing to see the committee expedite the report coming out of that study so that the Prime Minister could receive a copy of it as quickly as possible and use the knowledge garnered therefrom to move forward with full approval, and ultimate construction of the pipeline, at all levels.

Thank you.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Mr. Kmiec.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

I guess I'll be wrapping up, if there are no other speakers, with some of the points that have been made. The uncertainty is not financial. It's entirely the making of the Government of Canada, with its dithering. You're asking us to trust the people who ran around torching everything, the entire regulatory process, adding to the uncertainty, and then to leave the arsonists in charge of fixing it. That's what you're asking us to do.

Minister Carr got out of this emergency cabinet meeting and then basically gave a non-answer to the media when they asked what he was going to do, and then he ran away. He was at the flame out front on Parliament Hill, and he ran away. He couldn't answer the question. This is the gentleman you want me to trust? He's the ultimate company man. Everything's going great, 86—

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Mr. Kmiec, I don't think you're on the motion.

[Tom Kmiec, Conservative, Calgary Shepard, AB]

To the motion, the uncertainty is caused by the Government of Canada and the lack of verbal and legal support, not financial support. The finance committee can be involved because the finance minister was at the table. It was a four-person meeting and he was right there. This does matter because it does affect his ministry. The decisions he will make on the financial implications for the Government of Canada, and what the Government of Canada will do to provide some type of financial support, matters to the committee here. It could be money, direct subsidies, an insurance policy, or an equity stake. We have no way of knowing that. We should find out what the implications are for budgetary matters.

Energy East, Northern Gateway, and Petronas were cancelled. Between Energy East and Northern Gateway, 1.625 million barrels per day of production are not moving through a pipeline. That's royalties, levies, and construction jobs, and that has a huge impact on the Government of Canada's bottom line. Trans Mountain moves 590,000 barrels per day. You are talking about a third of what has already been lost through your decision. Bill C-69 adds to the burden. We're talking about establishing a baseline of what the government can use to say, “This is how much money we've brought into the public coffers, so this is what the Government of Canada can do on the financial side and regulatory side to lessen the burden on the government.”

The last thing I will say is from a constituent. I think he raises a great point. Then, Mr. Chair, I'll turn it over to you if there are no other speakers. I will also ask for a recorded vote.

Darren Engels from my riding says:

When I finished university, I made the choice to move to Calgary, where I was told that the city was a built on a can-do attitude of hard-working people. My kind of place. I secured a career at a boutique investment bank that focused exclusively on the energy industry. I made it! My hard work paid off. Unfortunately, I now have a front-row seat of investment capital fleeing our country, due to an overly burdensome environment. Arguably, I cannot blame the investor for having zero confidence in Canada, given the hostile investment environment that has been created by over-reaching regulations and governments, I barely have any confidence in Canada anymore. The fact that Energy East, Northern Gateway, Petronas LNG have been abandoned, and there is real risk that Trans Mountain will be cancelled, should ring alarm bells across the country as the rule of law has been overtaken by the “green mob” that lacks facts but is well funded by foreign dollars.

The most unfortunate aspect of Canada's new reality is that I cannot honestly tell my daughters that if they work hard, good things will happen. Not in Canada, anyways. My next professional question might be: do I stay and fight for my livelihood and city I love, or do I move outside Canada to pursue the next phase of my career and protect the financial well-being of my family.

...

From my perspective, the current governments definitely do not stand up for the oil and gas industry. That is tragic, especially given that the oil and gas industry enabled Canada to survive the world-wide recession of 2008 and has employed thousands of people across the country, and provided millions upon millions of dollars to support our high-standard of living. Please, we need you to act.

Make me a proud Canadian again.

[The Chair, Liberal, Wayne Easter]

Thank you, Mr. Kmiec.

I have Mr. Albas for a short point, and then Mr. Poilievre.