Okay, thank you, Mr. Chair. I'll speak fast.
Thank you, Minister, for joining us today on such short notice. I really appreciate it.
Before I turn to questions related to your mandate letter, I want to commend you on your recognition that Canadian mining is recognized as a world leader in sustainable development and innovation, but I want to point out for the record that so is Canada's oil and gas industry. Of course, for decades, both our technology and innovation and our regulatory best practices particularly in Alberta have been exported and adopted in other oil-producing regions around the world. Those technologies have served to enhance energy development while minimizing the environmental footprint and creating jobs and increasing government revenue, and the biggest investors and developers of alternative and renewable energies are, of course, conventional oil and gas developers. So those efforts aren't mutually exclusive.
As you mentioned earlier, your mandate letter from the Prime Minister did say that your overarching goal will be to “ensure that our resource sector remains a source of jobs, prosperity, and opportunity.”
As you know, the oil industry lost 100,000 jobs by the end of 2015, and just last month alone, Alberta lost 22,000 full-time jobs. So people in my rural Alberta and responsibly developed resource-based riding are hurting. They're losing their jobs. They're losing their homes. It's a crisis in Alberta and a crisis in Lakeland, and times are becoming desperate for many. My riding and my province, of course, contribute so much to all of Canada, in large part because of the energy development there.
We know and we all acknowledge that Canada's investment climate is influenced by multiple factors, and we recognize that the downturn in the energy sector is being driven primarily by low global oil prices and global economic crises, but a major impact, of course, is government policy and how that either exacerbates or mitigates those external factors.
In your opening comments, you mentioned a transitional approach, which is by nature uncertain and unstable. The changes you've announced to the regulatory approval process are either not fleshed out in detail or are the ones we know for sure are causing confusion, and they will also add costs and delay and time. Like all sectors, Canada's energy industry requires certainty, predictability and stability from government. Your recently announced interim measures and your indications that more may be coming only increase ambiguity, uncertainty, and instability, and ultimately the cost is jobs are lost. I just wonder how soon Canadians can expect the government to clarify its regulatory requirements in order to ensure that our resource sector remains, as noted in your mandate letter, a source of jobs, prosperity, and opportunity.