They're all estimates, but they're high numbers.
I find it interesting that when provincial or federal Conservatives have conversations, the conversations are different on either side of the border. When they go south of the border and they're talking to American audiences, whom they want to approve pipelines like the Keystone XL, they talk about the tens of thousands of jobs in upgrading and refining that will be created once our raw bitumen is provided to them as feedstock. Then when they come north of the border, they don't talk about those jobs that are going to be provided to the Americans instead of Canadians. They say we'll create other jobs.
On the subject of jobs, I think this is really important. We heard a lot of big numbers from Dr. Mintz. He was quoting two studies in particular, done by his colleagues Dr. Moore and Dr. Mansell, both from the U of C. They were expert witnesses at the NEB hearings on the Northern Gateway pipeline. We were there as intervenors. I watched as both of those professors had their reports torn to shreds in front of the National Energy Board.
Both reports had numbers about job creation that were based on one factor only, and that was the presumed uplift in price that would result from gaining access to the Asian market. Under cross-examination by expert witnesses, these guys were torn apart. They were forced to admit that there probably will be no change in price at all as a result of access.
The Alberta government's expert witness, working for Wood Mackenzie, basically said that the discount that resulted from filling up the coking refineries and taking that capacity and spilling over to the cracking refineries...the pipeline would only take away that excess capacity for one year. There would be one year, instead of 30 years—which all of their estimates of huge job creation were based on. There would be only one year in which the Northern Gateway pipeline, by accessing Asian markets, would result in prices going up slightly, and then they would go back down again.
Frankly, to throw those numbers around is a little disingenuous after they've been torn apart by experts at the NEB.