I want to thank my colleague Mr. Sopuck for letting me sub in today.
Minister, thanks very much for being here.
My question is in a bit of a different direction. I just want to put out a comparison here. As of now, about 740,000 barrels of oil a day are being tanked into eastern Canada, the United States, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, so about 3,800 to 3,900 tankers per year. That's about $17 billion leaving the Canadian economy, going to foreign oil producers. That would cover about half of our federal deficit. By comparison, the west coast has about 246 tankers per year, about 1.3% of the total commercial vessels going into the west coast.
The Liberal government doesn't seem to have much of an issue with the tanker traffic off the east coast, which is 16 times higher that the tanker traffic off the west coast. I'd like to ask, why is it okay for Atlantic Canada and Quebec to have crude oil off their waters, but you have a unilateral tanker ban that is going to be blocking the Northern Gateway, and is going to be impacting jobs in B.C., Saskatchewan, and Alberta? Why such a difference of attitude between the west coast tanker traffic and the east coast tanker traffic?