Good afternoon, Chair and committee members. Thank you for the opportunity to meet with you today to speak about the benefits of the Trans Mountain expansion project to the entire Canadian economy.
My name is Greig Sproule, and I am the vice-president of tolls and tariffs for the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers, otherwise known as CAPP. CAPP represents Canada's oil and natural gas producers from coast to coast, including the conventional, offshore and oil sands sectors.
The upstream oil and natural gas supply chain stretches across the country, reaching thousands of businesses located in every province and supporting over 450,000 jobs for Canadians. When factoring in induced employment, that number nearly doubles to 900,000 jobs. The jobs created by the industry are high-paying. The average wage in the conventional oil and natural gas sector pays about $47 per hour more than the national average, which means higher standards of living for workers and higher income taxes for government. The industry is also one of the largest employers of indigenous people in the country, and hundreds of indigenous-owned businesses make up a significant part of the supply chain.
There are two major points I want to make today in my opening comments.
First, the Trans Mountain expansion project is a positive net benefit to the Canadian economy and will deliver benefits for Canadian businesses and taxpayers for decades to come. This project will support Canadian crude oil production growth and allow for increased access to global energy markets. This will contribute to Canada's GDP, provide positive support to trade balances, create and sustain Canadian jobs, and generate additional revenues for governments that help pay for our teachers, doctors, roads and social programs. The Bank of Canada is expecting the project to contribute 0.25 percentage points to Canada's GDP in the second quarter of this year. To illustrate that, this increase is larger than the total increase in British Columbia's GDP growth for this year.
Recent reporting has indicated that the Trans Mountain project has also enabled Canadian oil exports to reach record levels, contributing to increased trade balances. Record exports are also contributing to government revenues. Looking back at the last fiscal year, Canada's oil and natural gas industry generated approximately $45 billion in revenues for governments at all levels through royalties, taxes and other fees.
This committee has been discussing, in part, the cost of building a pipeline. I would like to highlight the fact that much of the investment to build this project has supported Canadian jobs and businesses. Through construction, the project employed nearly 37,000 workers, including over 3,000 indigenous workers. Over $4.8 billion in contracts was awarded to indigenous-owned entities. In addition, over $600 million has been committed as part of mutual benefit agreements with indigenous communities.
My second point is that the project would have been even better for Canada if we had paved the way for private investment to build the pipeline. CAPP believes that, had the Government of Canada created a regulatory environment for the project to be economically viable for the private sector, it could have more appropriately de-risked the project while ensuring its completion.
Policy uncertainty, interprovincial challenges, delays in project approvals and regulatory complexity are making it incredibly difficult to build the nation-building projects needed to power Canada's economy. It is unfortunate that our complex and ever-changing regulatory environment is impeding Canada's ability to attract the private investment needed to build major projects like the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion. We need to fix our major-projects process in order to extract the true value of our natural energy resources and maximize that value for Canadians.
Thank you for your time today and for the opportunity to present the committee with additional information. I welcome any questions you may have.