Thank you for having me on the Standing Committee on Industry and Technology.
For the purpose of context, I would like to provide you with a brief background.
I'm the president and chief operating officer of an oil field services company that was established in 1996. It's a second-generation, family-owned company. I also come from a farming family and we have two beautiful daughters who are the fourth generation on the family farm.
The oil and gas sector and farming have been the heart and soul of not only our family, but also the majority of Albertans, Saskatchewanians and Manitobans.
My business works closely with Canada's world-class energy sector and is proud to do so. As president and COO of a business that helps industry improve areas of reasonable quality and safety, I can attest to the high standards already enforced in Canada's oil and gas industry. Yet, we have our Canadian government, which fails to support our industry and which is not allowing us to succeed to our fullest potential. We choose to ship oil across our oceans and support countries like Saudi Arabia.
According to the international merchandise trade database, Canada imported from Saudi Arabia approximately 1.5 billion dollars' worth in 2020, and 3.5 million tonnes in 2021. Saudi Arabia does not produce oil ethically, has little to no human rights and no regard for the environment, whereas in Canada we have created a safety industry around the care and protection of our industry-leading workers. Let's first look to our own industry and support our own country, our own citizens and our own economy.
Every day we see innovations brought forward by Canadian energy producers and we see just how important they are to the economic and social fabric of western Canada. Hard-working men and women focus on delivering the world's safest, most ethically sourced and environmentally friendly petroleum products. It is deeply important that we recognize the power that people have to invoke change in our society and understand that we all have vastly different experiences. This is what makes Canada great.
Canada produces less than 1.5% of the world's greenhouse gas emissions. Of that, Canada's oil industry produces about 0.3% of all greenhouse gas emissions.
Let me be clear. My family and I have a great love for the outdoors and a great aspiration for a clean environment. It is very important that we protect it. I care about the decisions that are being made by the Canadian government. By adding red tape and buying fossil fuels from countries that do not take the same environmental protections as we do, we are supporting unsafe and environmentally damaging practices.
I fear that Bill C-235 in its current form will effectively harm the resource industry in Canada even further and rob the world of the energy securities it so desperately needs.
These policies have also had a frightening destabilizing effect on western democracies in Europe, making them vulnerable to Russia. We will still need oil and gas for the foreseeable future. With the invasion of Ukraine and Europe being held hostage to Russian energy, it has become clear that the world needs more clean, green Canadian energy. We need to be self-sustainable and able to rely on our own resources and our own infrastructure. We do not want to fall victim to energy insecurity the same way Europe has.
Canada has low-cost green energy solutions to prevent the current energy crisis. Alberta and our western neighbours are doing the greening of the economy already. We have solar and wind farms and carbon capture trunk lines, and we produce the cleanest oil and gas in the world. We have the largest coal reserves in the world for making clean, efficient coal gasification in the making of syngas.
Entrepreneurs and provinces do not need federal interference on how to run our industry. We all want the best for our environment for generations to come, but drowning this generation and the future in inflation and red tape is not how we prosper and promote innovation and our economic success.
Bill C-235, again, is another step by our government to kill an industry that would be needed well into the future—whether you want to hear that or not. Wind energy, solar energy and electric cars still depend on fossil fuels. Canadian entrepreneurs are best equipped to solve these problems. Not only does this bill fail to recognize the leaders in this field, but it does nothing but hold those innovations back.
I will leave you with this. We are shipping oil across our oceans when it is unnecessary, considering the abundance of our own resources. We are shipping 500,000 barrels a day up the St. Lawrence River to Quebec refineries, instead of using pipelines and building more pipelines, which are far superior for the environment.
I ask you, why are we continuing to fixate on the west? I strongly believe that if this government truly understood our resources and how they are being produced in the west, it would have a different outlook. I encourage you, and I invite you, to come and understand the truth about Canadian energy.
Bill C-235 seems to be a classic federal overreach, trying to dictate and influence these three western provinces. In simple terms, the federal government needs to step back. We are already a leader. We need to start promoting it. We need to start educating people on the importance of our world-class industry.
Let's start by recognizing and supporting the world's greenest, safest, ethically produced oil right here in Canada.