The first question is about how our members would benefit from sustainable resource development. I would begin to answer that question by acknowledging the basic fact that here in Alberta we have petroleum resources. That is our competitive advantage. People have talked about the Alberta advantage in the past as being some product of government policy, perhaps low-tax regimes. However, the reality is that what has given us a real advantage and really underpinned our prosperity and our ability to create sustained jobs is our resources. The main benefits of developing these resources are job creation, economic development, and profits for corporations so that they can reinvest, and government revenue.
To put it simply, these are the resources we have, and in that respect we're not really that different from any other Canadian province. We're a resource-producing country, and we have to take advantage of what we have, and what we have are natural resources in Alberta. We have petroleum resources. We would be foolish not to develop them.
On the subject of refining and upgrading, as I said, we support moving up the value ladder, because it creates more jobs, better jobs, spinoff jobs, and jobs that are more impervious to the ups and downs of the price of oil and economic conditions. I want to stress that point. When you have an upgrader, if you have a petrochemical plant, the statistics show that they are economic stabilizers.
In the upstream of the energy sector, when the price of oil drops—as it has over the last year-and-a-half here in Alberta—jobs are shed very quickly. But in the downstream that doesn't happen. If you look at the number of people employed in Alberta in upgrading and refining, it's pretty much steady, whether the price of oil is high or low. This is an advantage for us, obviously, because it helps us to ride out recessions. But I would also argue that it would be an advantage that could be enjoyed in any other province where refining, upgrading, or petrochemical manufacturing took place.
As an Albertan and someone who represents Alberta workers, I'd like to see the resource we own collectively as Albertans used to better the interests of our members, but if it's not going to be an Albertan—