Thank you very much, Mr. Chair.
I had a few comments previously on this motion. I know that, as you were mentioning, the preamble is something that maybe shouldn't be there. Of course, we've had others who say, well, all we're doing is trying to set the stage.
I have a few points to make on the preamble, and I'll go to the part that was presented in the main motion. It moves that “the Standing Committee on Natural Resources begin a five-meeting study on the impact of this failure”—I don't know which failure we are speaking of—“to clean these wells”. We did have at least a recognition that if we were dealing with national issues, it should be the whole country rather than just in Alberta, so we did cancel that off.
It continues with, “the impacts of the pollution from not cleaning up abandoned and orphaned wells”. Of course, we did have that discussion with Mr. Patzer a moment ago about the difference between abandoned wells, which are at that stage because they are safe—they're still on the books but they are safe, at that point—versus the potential with orphaned wells, because they may or may not be safe. This is the aspect that is there.
However, going back to the preamble, it doesn't say that. It says, “There are 1,600 abandoned and orphaned oil wells in Alberta polluting farmland, waterways, and air”. There's an inaccuracy there. Of course, that, then, becomes part of the actual motion. People get the idea that there is something extremely wrong taking place, but that certainly isn't the way it is.
Then they discuss “regulations to hold companies to account for well cleanup”. That's already there. That's what the Alberta energy resources regulatory group is for. It says, “the potential opportunities associated with cleaning up abandoned wells, and report its findings to the House.”
When I look at that, one thing that is significant is the opportunity for cleaning up abandoned wells and the kinds of other things that can be done. There are different choices as to how you're going to deal with that. Are you just going to close them in? Are you going to use them so that you can sequester carbon and then maybe try to regenerate and rejuvenate the pools that are there? That is certainly a discussion that has some merit.
Again, if one can't or doesn't understand what abandoned wells and orphaned wells are, then one is demonizing everything that is taking place.
There's another aspect that I really want to dwell on today. This is where it says, “The Government of Alberta sent back $137 million”—I think it's $136 million, but that's beside the point—“because they failed to use the funds provided by the Government of Canada to clean up abandoned wells and create jobs in the pandemic”. Again, this is a statement that maybe numerically has some sense; however, it doesn't address the true facts. This is what I presented last day: Those dollars that were being discussed, of course, were to have been spent on first nations land. Rather than simply saying that they'd get just anybody to go in there and reclaim it, the Alberta government worked extremely closely with first nations so that they could take on that responsibility.
Of course, it does take a bit of time to make that happen, and therefore it became an issue. One could have said, “We can find some of the other companies that have been doing the rest of it. We can put them into the first nations and push them aside,” but there are two things here. First of all, that isn't how we do things there. Second, it's on federal land. I mean, it's a fact. I know that people are not overly proud of it, but it's a responsibility that the federal government should be dealing with.
Then, if you take a look at the actual numbers, you'll see that it's $133.3 million that was to have been spent out of the $137 million. I guess, if you want to be nitpicky, there's perhaps $3 million that would have been in the fund that the Alberta government could have then maybe cleaned up two wells or something like that with, but that's being pretty nitpicky.
Here, then, you have this government trying to make a point about the irresponsibility of the provincial government, and it all says that. It goes through it. It lays that out constantly in every part of the preamble and in the actual motion, even though we tried to change it a bit—and with you, Mr. Chair, being able to make the change in that motion.
We have all of that, but there is zero recognition for the fact that the government knew that this $137 million was allocated to cleanup on first nations. That in no way, shape or form has come into any of this motion. It comes in only because we know that—