Thank you for focusing me again, Mr. Chairman.
The fact that Mr. Simard brought up my muscle cars just made me think back to the 1970 Challenger Hemi that I bought, which I had for a period of time, and the big-block Chevelle convertible, which was just phenomenal. Then I bought a Chevrolet Vega that somebody had wedged a little 327 Chevy into, and that thing just went like a bandit.
That really refocused my thoughts, my little diversion there on muscle cars, and what that has to do.... The fact is that the industry we have here in Canada that is using our natural resources is becoming more and more efficient. I was talking about the amount of hydrocarbons that I was burning back in the seventies. Now, with the technology that we have today that is making the same amount of horsepower, we're using about half of the fuel that we did before. That's amazing. Why is that important? It is important because if we're burning half the fuel, we need to produce half as much, or we can sell that much more. Whether it's in the oil and gas industry, whether it's in the forestry industry or whether it's in mining, which is what we have in Timmins—James Bay, we know that if we can become more efficient users of the natural resources that we have, they're going to last longer. They're also going to create lower emissions.
I think that creating targets that are reasonable and sustainable is important. We know that this Liberal government, in spite of the carbon tax, which was supposed to be a cure-all for everything, hasn't met any of its emissions targets—and that's unfortunate—except for the one year during COVID when nobody was driving or moving anything.
What we need to do is protect our natural resource industry. I know there are a lot of advances in technology. I know that solar and wind are important, and I know that this is the direction that Bill C-50 would like to take the natural resources industry in here in Canada. It was interesting, because we had industry on the Hill here last week, and there were industry representatives. I went to one of the receptions and was talking to one of the producers there. They were boasting about how their whole facility was solar powered. They showed me the rows upon rows of solar panels. I told them that was very interesting. They said that they have a connection to the grid in the case of the solar system not being able to provide enough energy to properly run their plants. The question I asked this young lady was this: If there wouldn't have been a subsidy to have installed these solar panels up front, would it be economically viable to be using solar energy versus the hydro energy that we have in Manitoba? The answer was no. The only way that a lot of this stuff works is if we take tax dollars and subsidize it. I think we have to look seriously at whether that's the direction that we need to go. Do we want everybody else to pay to subsidize our reduced energy bills? I don't know if that's fair. I don't think it's the right way to do it.
My point in talking about muscle cars and where that whole industry has evolved to today is that as time moves along, industry and technology advance to the point where we become more efficient. I think that over time, that happens in the energy industry as well. However, when we force it to happen this way, there's nothing efficient about it, and it takes huge amounts of tax dollars to achieve the results that we get. I believe that we'll get the same results at the end of the day if we allow these things to naturally progress, if we allow industry and technology to use our resources responsibly to create our desired results while using less of our resources, and I think we can do that.
We know that there are a lot of things that we need to consider when we're studying these bills here at the committee. I think that if we get representation in here from the mining industry, in particular from the Timmins—James Bay constituency, we're going to hear reports from these miners and company owners about how difficult it is for these junior miners to start up and how absolutely necessary the products are that they produce.
I listed several of the junior mining companies in the list that I provided for committee just a few moments ago. You could see that several of these mines are lithium mines. Lithium is a project that's required in the production and development of the batteries that need to power our electrified economy, and in these batteries that we want to make in Stellantis and Volkswagen. I think Ford is considering something as well.
It's important that we hear from witnesses from Timmins—James Bay about how they'll feel about it, and not only on the labour side. I think the labour side is very important. We want to make sure that Canadians can bring home powerful paycheques, and that they can keep a higher percentage of those paycheques in their pockets and not have to pay them through increased costs related to the carbon tax—with the higher cost of groceries, the higher cost of home heating, the higher cost of fuel in their vehicles. With powerful paycheques, we're going to build a powerful economy that is going to continue to drive the welfare of our country.
We're also going to be able to see our export markets expand. We know that Europe has a huge market for us. There are 500 million people as part of the CETA trade pact that we have access to with the free trade agreement. We can access these people with our natural resource products here. We have lots to offer them, whether it's LNG or whether it's our clean hydrocarbon diesel fuel and gas, whether it's forest products, or whether it's the lithium that comes from the mines—the cobalt, uranium—all the stuff that we need and other countries need that we have. We have that here.
We need to be responsible with how we're going to develop these resources. Bill C-69 was an abject failure in that regard. It got nothing done. It made it burdensome for the industry. It created an untenable situation for anything to happen in the natural resource sector. I think that's something we can improve on.
There's a reason this committee should be looking at Bill C-69. It should also be looking at the decision on plastics, like I said before, because of the importance of milkshakes and other things.
This committee needs to be working on legislation that the courts have said is not constitutionally compliant. It's absolutely important we do that, especially if we think we should be studying legislation that references failed legislation. We need to get it right on Bill C-69. We need to get it right on the regulation from the Liberal cabinet on single-use plastics. I think those are the issues this committee should be seized with and should be studying.
Mr. Chair, I think I've made my point, and why it's important that we hear from witnesses from Timmins—James Bay in forestry, in mining, because of the products they produce and also because of how important it is to our studies.
With that, Mr. Chair, I think I've made a good argument.
I've heard from several committee members on why they're not going to support my subamendment. I don't know why they wouldn't want to get witnesses in from Timmins—James Bay. What do these folks have against folks who live in Timmins—James Bay? Why wouldn't we want to hear from them and hear what's important to them?