Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to appear before the House of Commons finance committee.
Your job is to recommend to the government measures that will strengthen the economy. I can do that for you in two sentences. We want a government that will defend and promote Canada's oil and gas industry, an environmental leader compared with any other major producer in the world. Second, we expect government to champion pipelines.
Earlier this week, our association launched Oil Respect, a campaign to provide regular Canadians with an opportunity to stand up and demand respect for Canada's oil and gas industry. We launched this campaign because we were tired of the misinformation and half-truths spread by foreign celebrities, radical environmentalists, and grandstanding politicians who twist the facts about our industry.
Oil Respect is about respect for facts, respect for workers and their families, respect for the environment, and respect for an industry that has contributed greatly to giving Canada some of the highest living standards in the world.
What are the facts?
Canada's oil and gas industry meets what are now the highest and toughest environmental standards among the large producing nations in the world. It employs 500,000 Canadians. It is the largest private sector investor in Canada and contributes $17 billion per year to support Canadian social programs.
In 2015 the industry lost $60 billion in revenue, which is equivalent to losing the entire auto sector from the Canadian economy in just one year.
The industry is accustomed to the ups and downs of commodity prices. We know that occasionally we will go through periods of low prices, job losses, and consolidation. In this latest downturn, according to Statistics Canada, we have lost 100,000 oil and gas jobs. It's the worst downturn since the 1980s.
It isn't just oil workers losing their jobs; families are losing their homes and businesses are going bankrupt. However, understand that in spite of this hardship, our industry is not looking for a government handout. We are asking for an honest discussion by our political leadership.
Oil Respect is about federal leadership that stands up and fights for oil workers, and we will call out politicians who take revenues while denying the industry that produces them.
According to the International Energy Agency, global demand for energy is expected to increase by 37% by 2040, and fossil fuels will make up 75% of the energy mix.
The world does not need Canadian oil and gas; the world just needs oil and gas. We need the federal government to advocate for Canadian oil and gas workers, companies, and pipelines already meeting much higher environmental standards than those imposed anywhere in the world. Otherwise, they will allow the critics to crush our industry, opening the door to the United States, Russia, Iran, and Saudi Arabia to supply the world's energy demands—countries with much lower environmental, labour, safety, and human rights standards. That makes absolutely no sense.
Without pipelines for export, Canadian products receive far less than the world price, resulting in fewer jobs, lower profits, and diminished government revenues to support Canadians. That means Canadians continue to subsidize American consumers.
We need federal leadership to champion national pipeline projects, because they are in the national interest of all Canadians. If we care about the facts, jobs, and our economy, we need our elected representatives to fight for pipelines, something we see consistently from Premiers Wall and Gallant.
We also believe that oil and gas families and businesses need respect. They are hurting right now, and they rightly believe their federal government should stand up for them. We expect our government to have an honest discussion about the great benefits of Canada's oil and gas industry, especially when it's only too happy to receive the revenues it produces.
Thank you.