To the colleague who made the comment about governments building pipelines, therein lies the problem. This government wants to pretend that the only way it's possible for pipelines to be built in Canada is for the government to buy and build them. The Conservative vision is that regulatory and investment conditions will attract private sector investment, and that Canada will maintain, as it always has, world-class diligence, scrutiny, regulatory enforcement, science and traditional knowledge. Canada has always been revered and known around the world for decades for that expertise—ironically, before this Liberal government came to power in 2015.
The truth is, of course, that multiple private sector proponents submitted pipeline proposals under the previous government because, at that time, they knew it was a government that, if the private sector met the regulatory requirements and could prove the economic, public and environmental interests of their proposal, with clear, timely conditions and decisions, they could go ahead and get their big projects built once the federal government approved it. The truth is that there were multiple private sector proponents submitting, spending multiples of millions of dollars over years and years, and were supported by indigenous entrepreneurs in local indigenous communities and by citizens in every place where these proposals were made.
It is possible for big, important infrastructure of all kinds to be built without the government putting taxpayers on the hook. It must be the government that executes its duty and responsibility in its jurisdiction, but it ought to be the private sector proponents that take the risk, spend the money and build this infrastructure to the benefit of our whole country. If this government would actually allow Canada to expand its production of oil, LNG and other energy and resource products and technology, which the world has been begging Canada for.... The only person who has constantly said there's no business case for it is, of course, this current anti-energy, anti-private sector Prime Minister of the anti-energy, anti-private sector NDP-Liberal-Bloc government of the last nine years.
It is alarming to me that a current government member of Parliament thinks that governments have to build and pay for pipelines, because the government's money isn't its own: It's taxpayers' money. It is unconscionable and ridiculous, in the case of TMX, that taxpayers are now on the hook. As these experts outlined, it's an asset that the government never had to buy and that actually resulted in a five-year delay on the start-up time and ballooning costs with, frankly, no clarity on how in the heck taxpayers will ever be made whole. This is all the fault of this government.
Hindsight is 20/20, but they were warned repeatedly by Canada's Conservatives. It's the only party over the last nine years that has repeatedly and consistently pointed out that energy and natural resources development, and the oil and gas sector in particular, is the biggest private sector investor in the Canadian economy by a long shot. This is just reality. That's the truth. It's to the benefit of every government and every citizen of this whole country.
Prime Minister Trudeau had a choice. He could have taken the option the court gave in the case of northern gateway. He could have restarted the indigenous consultation—which the court said was an option—gotten it right, and then approved what at that point was the private sector proponent's application for a stand-alone export pipeline.
This is important because if that had happened, it is clear that the northern gateway would have been well on its way if the Prime Minister had chosen, as the court had allowed, to redo the indigenous consultation on northern gateway.
By the way, all indigenous communities directly impacted by the northern gateway pipeline supported it and also were counting on the various deals they had negotiated hard for with the private sector proponent. It is true this Prime Minister didn't consult those indigenous people when he unilaterally vetoed the northern gateway pipeline that had been previously approved by the former government. He didn't take the option to get that indigenous consultation right and ensure that stand-alone export pipeline to Asian markets, which actually would have allowed Canada to deliver its energy and our technology where it is needed.
Instead, he vetoed it. Then, exactly as has been pointed out, the court made almost the exact same recommendation on the Liberals' failures on their indigenous consultation on TMX. It was this Prime Minister who killed those pipelines.
After nine years, it's clear that it is this government that is trying to pretend to all Canadians and to the world that this is just the way it is and that this is how things happen.
It's not at all true. This has choices and consequences. He should have taken the option and gotten the indigenous consultation right on northern gateway. That stand-alone export pipeline would be built and operating, with diversified markets in Asian countries that need our resources desperately, to the benefit of every Canadian. Then that would have been right. That would have been front-ended and the government would have done its job on TMX. It's this government that failed on the indigenous consultation on TMX later on. That's what the court said.
This government, even when the court told them they had failed on TMX, delayed and dithered—