Sure. Thank you.
I get the sense that the bill is trying to ensure that the west gets its share of spending and attention in the decarbonization efforts, but the direction of the spending is problematic.
When anybody hears “retraining workers”, whether it's the cod fisheries or various sectors in the past, that basically means the government is saying, “We're going to regulate your company or industry out of business, but we'll retrain some of your workers and hopefully they'll be okay.” Prairie communities know this will hurt them. It shouldn't be in this bill. Look at the cod fishers in Newfoundland or even the coal workers in Alberta right now. You can't just retrain people to jump into new jobs that will last for 20 years. If you announced that you're going to retrain auto workers in Ontario or dairy farmers in Quebec, you wouldn't get a thank you in response; you would get a panic.
As I've explained, the world really needs our valuable resources more than ever. In addition to the direction being misguided, because it's trying to transition away from this super valuable resource that the world needs more than ever, it also intrudes on our provincial management of resources. It's not just that the federal policies are misguided; it's that they really shouldn't be the ones making some of these decisions. Our Constitution makes it clear that the provinces have the jurisdiction over their resources. These policies are severely impacting our ability to develop them. Provinces recently unanimously joined a challenge of Bill C-69, and the carbon tax was hotly contested in the courts by many provinces.
I did a political philosophy Ph.D. There's a famous change that happened in the Enlightenment. Thomas Hobbes said that the government's role is to keep you safe, and you should obey it as long as it's keeping you safe. Then John Locke came in and said, well, unless the government's taking your property and making it so that you can't make a living. That's also grounds for speaking up and demanding better.
This isn't just a difference of opinion on a political issue; it's a clear attempt to throttle the largest economic sector in the Prairies. That will impoverish us in particular, but it will also impoverish all of Canada. We have to stop talking about transitioning away from oil and gas and start talking about the opportunities for oil and gas to provide immense prosperity for Canadians, help with energy security and help our European allies get out from being under the thumb of Vladimir Putin and Middle East dictators.
If you really care about the environment, the single greatest thing Canada can do to reduce emissions is to get LNG flowing in copious amounts off our west coast so that China isn't producing...all these coal plants it's building. China has announced new coal that will double the oil sands emissions. They announced that in 2020. That's just their new coal. If they were doing LNG instead of that, it would be 50% less in emissions, and much less in other things that are emitted by coal. In particular, the emissions would be reduced by 50%. That would save the entire oil sands, if we could replace their coal with our LNG.
It's becoming more obvious. It's obvious to lots of western Canadians. As I said, 60% of Quebeckers agree that we should be doing LNG. This whole notion that we should be transitioning away from gas is wrong. It's offensive, and it is leading to people wanting to say, “If we can't even produce our resources, why should we be in this country?” We're trying to prevent that. It is an understandable sentiment, and people need to take it seriously.