Hi, everybody.
I want to start by saying that it's a pleasure to appear in front of you because I have learned, especially over the last number of months, that parliamentary committees are the pulse, the heartbeat, of Parliament. I honour the work that you do.
You may think that it's odd to discuss the future of the Prairies. I'm going to start in 1901.
We have spent the last number of weeks mourning the loss of a monarch, but very few people will know that, on the day that Queen Victoria died, Winston Churchill was in Winnipeg. He looked out the window towards the west. He said, in correspondence with his mother that day in January of 1901, that someday this land would feed the world. Little did he know that it wouldn't just be what we grow. It wouldn't just be the food supply that's so essential for all of us, but that a bushel of canola might be as powerful as a barrel of oil.
It is this sense of promise, of discovery, of building an economy from the ground up, that has distinguished the contribution of prairie Canada to the national economy and the international demands that we are meeting all of the time.
It's a very special part of the country, not only for me because I was born and raised there, but for people who appreciate this relationship between natural resources that have fuelled economic development in the region and the intellectual firepower that's a part of it.
I've always thought that stereotypes were dangerous because they are barriers to progress. If you say the word Alberta or Saskatchewan, you may get a stereotype that comes to your mind, but I bet you it's not Michael Houghton. Michael Houghton is a Nobel Prize laureate who works at the University of Alberta. He was given the Nobel Prize for his discovery of vaccines and hepatitis C.
I would prefer, if people think of stereotypes in Alberta, that they think of Nobel laureates rather than whatever else they may have in their mind. It's a tribute to the diversity and the intellectual firepower of the prairie economy.
I won the lottery in appearing in front of you today. Now I know why, when somebody wins the lottery, there are all kinds of people who want to talk to them about the best use of their proceeds. When it became apparent that I was lucky enough to be able to appear in front of you, people had all kinds of ideas of how I should use this slot.
I did have an idea of my own, and it was to build on the work that we had done across the prairie through the lens of how we can align the interests of governments, the private sector, academic institutions and the working class in order to give ourselves a better chance to move this file ahead.
Look at the diversity of what we're dealing with here. It's the natural resource of the production of energy in all of its forms. It's agriculture and value-added agriculture. It's the life sciences. It's how we manage water across our region. The only thing that gets in our way, really, are the limits of our imagination and the barriers that we erect for ourselves.
That's what this bill is all about. It's to reduce those barriers by mandating, by requiring ministers of the federal government to report back to Parliament about the framework that they have constructed in order to better align those policies. This is not a jurisdictional grab to maybe pre-empt some questions. This is within the federal jurisdiction, the federal government reaching out to counterparts in the provinces, the municipalities, the unions and NGOs, because we all have a stake in writing the next chapter of prairie economic history.
I don't think the template in this bill is exclusively regional. I think, if it becomes Canadian law—and I hope it will—it will be an example for other regions of the country whose inhabitants feel as passionately about their region as I feel about mine. I see this as a promise—as a possibility of working not at loggerheads or in opposition, motivated either by ideology or special interest, but in alignment around the common interest. This bill, I think, is a modest expression of what is possible.
When I was first asked by people what I thought the influence of this bill might be, my answer was, “Somewhere between absolutely zero to changing the way we do business as a nation.” We'll see where the truth lies, but I'm betting it will be somewhere in between.
The first step is agreeing that this framework will have to be reported back to Parliament within a reasonable period of time. That framework will drive the future chapters we will write together as prairie folk and as Canadians. It says we're not going to leave partnerships to chance. We're not going to leave them to the ambitions of any one government, any level of government, or any one industry or union. Its aspiration is to align the interests of all of us.
It's not pie in the sky. It's pragmatic, because what we seek to do is create wealth. We spend a lot of time in our country talking about how we are going to distribute wealth. That is a primary function of the public sector and it's important that we have rigorous debates about it. Where is the wealth coming from? Who's creating the wealth? How do we create the conditions where that wealth can be created sustainably, with an eye on trends that will drive future public policy and investment decisions? That's what we seek to achieve.
I know we have most of an hour to engage in debate. I'm really looking forward to that, Mr. Chair. It's a chance for us to think together about the best way we can achieve this common aspiration.
With those few words of introduction, I truly welcome the conversation.
Thank you.
