Thank you.
As I was stating, with regard to the Keystone XL pipeline, the Prime Minister had a responsibility, an opportunity, to take leadership and advocate for this project, not only for the sake of jobs but for the sake of the unity of this country and our lives and the things that we enjoy doing day in and day out. In losing Keystone XL, we are losing thousands of jobs. We have to ask ourselves what the Prime Minister is doing to fight for those jobs in the same way that he fought for SNC-Lavalin jobs in Quebec.
What is he doing to advocate for the unity of the country? What is he doing to fight for the future of this nation? I would say that he is doing an inadequate job. There's an opportunity here, then, to hear from witnesses and to either verify what I'm stating or to perhaps prove the Prime Minister innocent. Maybe he is doing a lot and it's just unbeknownst to us.
When it comes to this, I think we have an opportunity here as a committee to take on a very important study that contends for the state of unity in this nation and fights for the livelihood of many Canadians. I think this industry is absolutely vital. It is the greatest contributor to our nation's GDP. Why wouldn't we want to have this conversation here at the natural resources committee? I do believe that oil and gas are a natural resource, and I do believe that Keystone XL plays a significant role in their development. It seems consistent, then, with the mandate of this committee, that we would take on this study.
Now, I think that when you look at this situation, you need to consider the impact of its cancellation, and further to that, we also need to figure out what went wrong. Why wasn't the Prime Minister willing to advocate for Canadians on this issue? Why wasn't he willing to pick up the phone, to make a call and to fight for our country? At at the end of the day, I would remind the committee and all Canadians that right now Canada is sitting in a place where we are facing the lowest vaccination rate and the biggest deficit and where we have among the highest jobless rates in the G7.