The loss of potential jobs in upgrading and refining is truly staggering. We've hired economists to make estimates and projections, and just in the case of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, which would take raw bitumen from the oil sands directly to refineries on the American gulf coast, we've estimated if that same volume of bitumen were instead upgraded and refined in Alberta, it would create between 30,000 and 50,000 direct and indirect jobs.
To look at it another way, I think it's useful to look at some of the value-added projects we have in Alberta already to see how many jobs they create. The one that comes most quickly to mind in my case is Suncor, which is unionized from top to bottom, and their members are members of our federation. Suncor in Fort McMurray alone employs about 5,000 people; about 3,000 of those people work directly in the upgrader. So if you build a mine without an upgrader or if you build in situ projects that are for export only, then you're missing out on 3,000 high-paying, family-sustaining, community-sustaining jobs, in the case of Suncor.
So when we talk about increasing the amount of bitumen going down pipelines to the U.S. and China, we're talking about whole communities, and it's not just the people who work directly in the refineries and upgraders. Each of those facilities, because they're major industrial projects, generate literally thousands of jobs in maintenance and construction every year, and thousands of spinoff jobs for suppliers and contractors that support those facilities. If you don't have the facilities, you don't have the operations jobs, you don't have the maintenance jobs, and you don't have the spinoffs. So the economic loss to Alberta and to Canada is staggering.
On the subject of royalties, I know people like Mr. Calkins like to dismiss arguments and like to suggest that the only reason that companies are investing in Alberta and in the oil sands is that we're giving away the resource. The reality is that these oil companies are coming to Alberta because they can make money. They're coming to Alberta because the price of oil is high and because the reserves are drying up all around the world and Alberta is one of the few areas in the world where there are reserves that can be developed in a profitable way. So whether we charge a small royalty, a medium-size royalty, even a large royalty, these companies would come, because we have what they want. We have what the world wants, and our government is simply giving it away without even trying to bargain.
One of the points I want to underline, as I'm not sure I made it clear in my presentation—