Thank you, Mr. Chair.
I'll try to collect my thoughts again as to where I was going. That's the second or third interruption, by way of a point of order.
I was just saying that just because a Liberal says something is so, it doesn't mean that it is so. The comment is made that these abandoned and orphaned wells are polluting farmland, waterways and air. There's no evidence to suggest that it's actually happening. To make a comment randomly, out of the blue.... To me it's a comment or a point that's made just to create agitation, which it obviously does. We shouldn't, I don't think, include things in our preamble that are intentionally put there to agitate people. I don't think it's helpful or useful for constructive debate and study for a preamble to start off from the perspective of agitating someone. However, I think if there's a legitimate concern, something that's well documented, I think those are the things we should be talking about. Regardless, it doesn't need to be in the preamble; it could be in the actual motion itself.
If we look at the difference between an abandoned and an orphaned well, we can see that abandoned wells actually have lifetime liability for contamination to the environment by the proponent. The company that owns them has a 25-year liability for surface reclamation issues. If there are issues to do with topography, vegetation, soil texture or drainage, the proponent of the well is responsible for those thing for 25 years following the abandonment of that well and, in fact, actually has lifetime liability for that well creating any contamination.
It's something I think the industry has taken very seriously. The Alberta Energy Regulator monitors these abandoned wells very carefully and makes sure that the owners of the wells are actually doing their due diligence and that they're actually maintaining their responsibilities and reducing the liabilities to our environment.
I also find it very interesting that, to a Liberal, a scandal is when somebody repays the federal government. In this case, the Alberta government has repaid the federal government $137 million. I find it interesting that they don't think it's a scandal when there's $400 million in the Sustainable Development Technology Canada program that's been misappropriated. They don't seem to think that's a scandal. In fact, the House has been seized with, for the better part of the last three weeks, debate on exactly that issue of whether documents related to the SDTC scandal, to their board of directors, to the misappropriation of funds and to the 186 conflicts of interest that existed should not be turned over to the RCMP because it certainly reeks of corruption.
The Liberals, for whatever reason, aren't seized with the scandalous nature of that particular occurrence, but they seem to be seized with $137 million that's returned to the federal government. Wow...talk about thinking backwards.
Let's talk about that $137 million. The Government of Alberta was given approximately a billion dollars, which was to be spent in the cleanup, the reclamation, the proper decommissioning of abandoned and orphaned wells. In the time frame that it was allotted, it was not able to complete the expenditures of the full billion dollars, and it asked the federal government for an extension so that it would be able to use the $137 million that remained unspent. The federal government, this Liberal government, Liberal-controlled bureaucracy, said, "No, send us the money. Send us $137 million." Because the Alberta government could not responsibly, from a good stewardship perspective, spend the money to achieve the results that it was supposed to achieve, it sent the money back to the federal government.
Instead of commending Alberta for being good stewards of the money, they now want to conduct a study to find out why it gave $137 million back. “Why didn't you spend it?” Well, I think we should be commending provinces that are good stewards of money and that can responsibly spend money to do this in a way they know they can stand behind, along with the results they have achieved. They issued the money through a tendering process that was fair, open and honest, and that resulted in qualified contractors doing the work. As we heard from Mr. Dreeshen, we know to what extent first nations rehabilitation folks were involved in the decommissioning of some of these wells. They do tremendous work. However, just because money is available doesn't mean it has to be blown out the door and squandered. Yet, this preamble suggests that would have been a better solution than returning the money to the federal government unspent.
I think we should be commending Alberta and saying, “Wow, Premier Smith, you've done a phenomenal job of making sure you responsibly stewarded the money the federal government gave you for a specific purpose. You weren't able to spend the money frivolously and without accountability, so you returned it to the federal government and kindly asked us for an extension to use the money responsibly.” We said no. This Liberal government should be praising Premier Smith for the good work she and her government are doing in Alberta.
The next bullet point talks about Saskatchewan. Again, in my earlier comments, I indicated that this government is one of division, seeking to create disunity right across Canada. Why would a preamble swipe at a neighbouring province to try to create some kind of animosity between the two? Only a Liberal would know the motivation behind that. I don't think there's any good reason to create animosity between provinces. We should, rather, be trying to build unity across this country. That's not something a bullet point like this does.
It also says, “Companies who abandon wells and fail to pay for their cleanup negatively impact provincial taxpayers and municipalities”. That's true. They should. That's why regulatory bodies, including the Alberta Energy Regulator, seek to monitor this carefully and hold individuals to the responsibility they committed to when they drilled the wells, exploited the resources in them and sent them to market. When they choose to no longer have them as productive resource wells, they also have to follow up. If they don't follow up with the owners of these wells to make sure there has been proper remedial action taken, it costs provincial and municipal taxpayers money. That's why the regulator is on top of these things and, I think, doing a good job. To have that as part of the preamble.... I don't think we've been hearing from any provincial or municipal taxpayers who think it's an issue, so why would you put that in a preamble? Again, it's to create animosity among people and to incite divisiveness.
“Orphaned and abandoned wells present an economic opportunity to support energy solutions like geothermal energy.” I'm not sure where that bullet point comes from, but it sounds like they want to repurpose oil wells to be geothermal energy sources. That might be worth studying. It could have been part of the motion, but here it is. We see it in part of the preamble. Who knows if there are opportunities there? I'm not sure how geothermal and oil go together. It's water and oil. I know my experience, Mr. Chair. Whenever I put oil in water, the two don't seem to want to comingle together very well. In fact, they separate. That is part of the process of oil extraction—sending steam down and having the oil come up. I'm not sure about the validity of that. There could be a business case there. Who knows? It probably would be worth a study.
I think the point I want to get back to, again, is found in the first couple of bullet points. It seems as though the province of Alberta has been unfairly targeted by the Liberal government, instead of recognized for the economic prosperity it gives our entire country.
I think there should be commendation shown to Alberta for the good work that it did do in responsibly using over $800 million of the funds given to it to actually fund remediation projects for abandoned and orphaned wells. I think it would have been wise of this Liberal government to have granted the extension to Alberta and to have said: “You've got qualified contractors and we want you to continue to use qualified contractors. We don't want you just throwing this out on the market and hiring contractors that, first of all, may not be properly trained and vetted to do this kind of work and may not be competent in this kind of work.”
I don't think those are necessarily the types of contractors that we want to award projects like this to, to do completion. As we've heard, there are responsible contractors. There are people who are trained. They have good safety programs. They employ indigenous.... Many that complete these remediation projects are actually 100% indigenous-owned contractors. I think that to grant an extension would have been the thing that this level of government should have done, and you know what? It would have been a non-issue, Mr. Chair.
The other problem I have with this motion is that we're currently in the midst of two studies. There's the TMX pipeline project, and Mr. Angus has really promoted studying what exactly happened that took this TMX pipeline project from a cost of what initially was pegged at $9.7 billion. By the time the federal government took it over or purchased it, that grew to just under $13 billion and now has exploded to $34 billion. I think that's a very worthy study and is one that this committee should have been seized with. I don't think we've actually gotten quite to the bottom of it yet, and I think our study will be wrapping up soon as far as hearing from witnesses goes.
We've got a lot of work to do on that study. We've got to give the analysts time to write a report. We've got to give them time to sift through all the data that's being submitted by the witnesses who we've had at committee and those who we weren't able to listen to. They have got to compile all that data and actually put together a report that's going to be cohesive for this committee to study and review. I think it would be important that we get that done before we embark on another study.
Also, then, we've been looking at electricity, at the capacity we have in this country and the grid and whether it's sufficient to meet the demands that, seemingly, right across the country, are increasing for electricity, especially clean electricity. I think that's been a really good study. We've heard from some very good witnesses. They are industry people who understand the situation and understand the economics here in Canada. That's also a report that needs to be written and studied by this committee.
We have a significant workload that we've undertaken at this committee, Mr. Chair. I just think that it would be helpful if you would take some time, together with the clerk, to sit down and prepare a schedule for this committee as to when these different things are going to happen and when we're going to be continuing the study with TMX or jumping back to electricity, rather than having these motions thrown in front of us by Liberal parliamentary secretaries to conduct yet another study when we have two that we're in the middle of and haven't finished.
They're both very important studies, Mr. Chair, and I would really hope that you, as the chair of this committee, would take some time to prepare a schedule that we can review and approve so that at least we know what we're going to be doing here, but I think our plate is full. I think this—especially the preamble—is very sad, and I would question its appropriateness in actually trying to create a cohesive atmosphere around this committee that would lead to doing productive work.
At this time, Mr. Chair, I'll cede my time to you. I'm sure there are other speakers who have opinions as well and who will make them known. Thank you.
