That's good.
I'll read into the record the motion we put on the paper and distributed to all the committee members:
That, pursuant to Standing Order 108(2), the committee undertake a study of the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline including (a) the loss of jobs and investment across Canada in all sectors that supply the energy sector, (b) the impact the cancellation of this project will have on the economic recovery from COVID-19 of Canada’s energy sector/natural resource industry; that the committee invite relevant witnesses, including representatives of industries and workers affected, as well as, the Minister of Natural Resources; that the Minister appear for not less than two hours; that these meetings be televised; that six meetings be allocated for this study; and that following this study a report with recommendations be presented to the House of Commons.
That's the motion.
Let me speak to the motion, if I may, Mr. Chair.
We've been through a lot in the energy industry over the last five years, and that includes the cancellation of several projects that were years in the mix. As you know, Mr. Chair, I've only been a member of Parliament for a year and a half. In that year and a half, getting towards common sense about how we approach what's happening in this industry and in the world has been what I think we need to bring to the table.
The recent cancellation of Keystone XL is one in a long list of failures that have happened on our side of the border vis-à-vis constructing infrastructure to get our product to market with our most important trading partner—and that partner, of course, is the United States of America.
I know that the United States is the party that cancelled this pipeline, but it did seem very much like a shrug of the shoulders by this government. It was one more failed infrastructure investment that didn't occur and allow us to get our resource to market. That market we're getting to, of course, is the gulf coast. That gulf coast is essential as a home for the heavy oil produced in Alberta to get the proper pricing.
Infrastructure is constraining us from getting a world price for our resource at this point. That lack of infrastructure translates to a $16-billion-a-year wealth transfer from Canada to the United States, and we should all be standing against that at this point. It matters to this economy, to the Canadian taxpayers, to our future and to every one of these social services that we, as elected representatives, are trying to provide to our constituents. That's not happening right now, and there is no real path forward.
Every path forward we seem to take over the past five years has been stymied. I agree that sometimes it's stymied by a foreign government that we don't seem to be paying enough attention to as far as getting them through the process is concerned, and sometimes it's stymied by our own government. We can look in reverse here over the last year at Keystone XL, which seemed to tick all the boxes, just like Tech Frontier.
These are all projects that are worth thousands of jobs to Canadians, billions of dollars in tax revenue, environmental advances in the way we produce our energy in this country and indigenous participation in the economy in Canada. All of these things have to move forward together, yet every time one of these proponents brings one of these projects to the table and ticks all those boxes so that it looks like it's getting through the process, there's an interruption at some point in time. Suddenly it does not proceed. This has to change.
It's the outlook that has to change, more than anything else, and I humbly submit, Mr. Chair, after being in this job for a year and a half, I feel there does not seem to be an open mind in many of the members on the other side of the aisle. I appreciate that there are still some who are entertaining our need to move forward with resource development in Canada. This is the natural resources committee. We need to look at how we produce resources in this country and how we take advantage of what we have in this country and contribute to the world's goals going forward.
Some of those goals are energy goals and some of those goals are environmental goals, and if you take a look at how much our industry has progressed as far as meeting its environmental commitments is concerned, it's astounding vis-à-vis every other industry in Canada, vis-à-vis every other hydrocarbon industry in the world. We lead on so many of these measures.
In debate in the House of Commons yesterday, the parliamentary secretary had an excellent speech on Line 5, which does appear to be, again, in the mix as far as a cancellation is concerned. That cancellation is going to be disastrous, and not just for the oil flow. It's not just Canadian oil; there's also some U.S. oil that finds its way into that pipe. It is a big conduit of important oil moving towards refining and manufacturing. [Technical difficulty—Editor] We get that raw resource to the markets, we manufacture it, we refine it into finished products and we turn it into things like automobile products.
We're building with the plastics that come out of the finished product at the end of the day. It is a linchpin for our economy. To lose that because a state governor is saying they don't like the environmental effects of a pipeline under the lake.... There's been an easement there for over 60 years. There has never been an accident, yet we're going to have to put the oil on tankers, of all things, as if that eases any of the environmental concerns the lakes are going to face, and we can't seem to get absolute clarity that the government is even paying attention to enforcing, or pushing the U.S. government on enforcing, the transit pipelines treaty from 1977.
There is a lack of attention being paid by the government towards this very important file about getting our resources to market. We need to address that. We need to turn the government's attention towards what is, number one, the biggest wealth generator in this country, which has paid—
