Thank you, Mr. Sidhu, but this is the first week we've been back in Parliament since Keystone XL was cancelled and this is an important issue for the country, whether you like it or not. The witnesses can wait while we go through this matter, with all due respect. Please, let's continue.
I heard the parliamentary secretary in the House of Commons yesterday talking about this matter, Line 5 being one aspect, and he actually said the opposition raised this issue irresponsibly, that this is something we as the opposition shouldn't deal with in the House of Commons. We raised this matter six times before the government even acknowledged that Line 5 was an issue that they had to deal with. This is the job of opposition—to hold the government to account on the issues that affect our country, the issues that affect our constituents, yet again I see from the parliamentary secretary's words that he doesn't think we should be involved in it. Well, I strongly differ with the parliamentary secretary in that respect.
As a matter of fact, last night I watched Richard Madan on CTV News. He was in the White House asking the same question, and the concerns were raised from the response in the White House that yes, this is something they're looking at. We need to get our team down there and make sure the case is made that this long-standing important infrastructure piece across this country needs to be maintained no matter what. This is something that does not seem to be at the forefront of this government's agenda. It is not irresponsible for the opposition to raise it, and if it's irresponsible for us to raise it, well, God forbid that Richard Madan and CTV News raise it in the White House. Good thing we're on top of it here on one side of Parliament. We'd like to make sure the government side of Parliament actually gets on top of this issue as well, because right now, as with all these issues, it seems to be ignoring it as if these issues don't matter or will just go away. This isn't going away.
This is our most important trade. We make $100 billion a year in our balance of trade with our oil export alone. That's significant value added. For a country that runs a $30-billion plus deficit in the balance of trade, $100 billion is a wallop, and it's the biggest wallop in our budget. When you look at the actual revenue we derive, we've derived almost $600 billion in government revenue in Canada over the last 20 years. That's real cash at the end of the day. Think about where our deficits are now. Think about how we're going to come out of this pandemic, and think about how we're going to address greenhouse gas reduction without this industry, because without this industry, we're capped. This industry reduces more than any other industry out there.
My friends on this committee, I want you to take a good look at this and try to move it forward in the government's mandate here so we're actually paying attention to this issue. It matters very much. Think about that, and think about the failures that have happened over the last five years. Think about Keystone XL if you want to go back a week. Think about Teck's Frontier project. Think about the northern gateway project and the energy east project. Think about TMX and why the government had to step in to buy it because we as a country screwed up a regulatory regime that got a private company to build a pipeline to get our product to market. That is all failure.
Let's look at Line 5. Let's look at Line 3, which is on the table now. Let's get a plan together so we stop failing. The government needs to start caring that they're failing on every file in the energy sector, and they need to start caring about the jobs that we're losing. They need to start caring about the economic outcome and they need to start caring about how we come out of this pandemic at the end of the day.
I've said a lot here, Mr. Chair. The motion's on the table, and I thank you for your time.