What's at issue is a federal government that pancakes and layers on anti-competitive policies, taxes, targets and timelines that are detrimental to Canadians and our standard of life and that undermine the potential for reliable, affordable, accessible fuel and power, which are the absolute essentials to our everyday lives in this big, cold, developed, proud country.
I hope that our colleague will accept a friendly amendment to ensure that his motion will supersede all current work of this committee. I hope it will buy a bit of time, although it's urgent for the Liberals to listen to the people who generate, distribute and provide on the front lines to Canadians who need their power, their services, their products and their technologies. I hope this government will actually listen to what these candid truth-tellers to policy and power are saying about the grave risks of continuing down the agenda that this government is imposing, even though it's still fraught with a lack of certainty and clarity. None of us should be participating in this charade of pretending that it isn't.
To the point that my colleague made, Conservatives, of course, opposed the government's purchase, by which we mean taxpayers' purchase, of the Trans Mountain expansion. There was a business case. Kinder Morgan believed there was a business case. The former federal Conservative government approved the Trans Mountain expansion. When this government came to office, for political purposes and ideology only, they outright froze the regulatory process of all existing major resource and energy infrastructure and project applications.
That was the beginning of driving out investment, of killing 300,000 oil and gas workers' jobs and of starting what are the consequences of having a decade of these guys: Canadian investment soaring in the U.S. and foreign and American investment collapsing in Canada. Worst of all is Canadian investment collapsing in Canada. The collusion between big government and rent-seeking oligopolies always rips off taxpayers and always undermines the public interest. Our job here at this table is to protect it and to fight for it.
The truth is that there was a business case, because a private sector proponent wouldn't have spent hundreds of millions of dollars going through a regulatory process otherwise, after which it got an approval to go ahead and build its interprovincial pipeline, which was in federal jurisdiction. However, what happened was these guys came in, froze the regulatory process writ large, as they do all the time, delayed and delayed and then forced Kinder Morgan to go through another process that they made up on the fly. They didn't get Bill C-69 out the door until years later. Then they started applying new conditions, with a new review and an entirely new bureaucratic process, to this private sector proponent for a project that had already been approved. They gave it the green light.
Then what happened? Well, the court ruled almost exactly the same thing it had ruled with northern gateway: The Liberals failed in their indigenous consultation. As many governments have done, they failed to have a decision-maker at the table and couldn't demonstrate that there was viable two-way back-and-forth consultation and accommodations between the parties.
Let's just be clear here: None of that ever had to be delayed. The proponent already had the green light. The proponent already went through a rigorous scientific, evidence-based regulatory process by world-class experts, which is, by the way, Canada's track record and the reality of Canadian energy development in this world. They already got the green light. That's the problem. That is what started the flood and the cancellation.
The charade the Prime Minister perpetuates is that there isn't a business case for the Canadian oil sands, Canadian natural gas or exports of LNG. Clearly, the private sector proponents think there's a case and—news to the Prime Minister—so do allies around the world, which are begging for Canadian resources and technologies. That would actually, by the way, help lower global emissions.
Moving forward, what happened was that anti-energy politicians, public policy-makers and activists took on every possible tool they could to kill the approved pipeline, to be obstructionist, to stop it at every step and to keep it from getting built. What we found out in the process was that the federal government itself gave tax dollars to anti-energy protest groups to block TMX and shut it down. That's the truth.
There's this language that there isn't a business case and nobody wants to do this. No. This is the consequence of a government that has an agenda to expand and exert command and control of the economic agenda to pick winners and force losers. That's what always happens when politicians and bureaucrats get involved in this kind of thing. The losses and the consequences are a generational travesty for our country, a failure of Canada to stand with our allies, a failure after 10 years of securing Canadian energy self-sufficiency and energy security and a skyrocketing cost of living crisis that has been caused by this big-government, corporate-oligopoly agenda.
Conservatives said the federal government needed to declare the Trans Mountain expansion a general advantage of Canada. That would have allowed the federal government to assert federal jurisdiction, which that project was in with federal approval. We said that the government had to immediately and urgently get indigenous consultation right. They delayed it, by the way, for six months before they even started it again. That's linked to the unilateral veto of the northern gateway pipeline that the Prime Minister made, again for votes in B.C. and not based on science or evidence. He unilaterally reversed the approval of northern gateway, the only stand-alone, private sector-proposed export pipeline going to a deepwater port with a fast track to Asia, which obviously the former Conservative government had approved.
Northern gateway wasn't just abandoned. Prime Minister Trudeau had the option from that court decision, just as he took in TMX, to redo the indigenous consultation and get it right. We would have had a fully functioning, dedicated export pipeline operating. If that had happened efficiently, the private sector would have built it on their tab. That would have given generational and permanent benefits to Canada.
We said the government had to assert federal jurisdiction, enforce the rule of law and uphold the successive court injunctions, which were very reasonable. Conservatives believe every Canadian has a right to protest, to demonstrate, to speak up and to speak out on energy projects, of course. The court injunctions were very reasonable. They included staying 100 feet from the entrance and not blocking the workers, because it's a safety issue, yada yada yada.
However, we all watched in slow motion as these activists and politicians colluded to weaponize their bylaws, undermine the concept of federal jurisdiction and question the legitimacy of the approval of this crucial energy infrastructure. The government deliberately dithered and delayed, and the truth is, exactly as my colleague MP Patzer said, they've been talking out of both sides of their mouths the entire time. What a tangled web we surely do weave when we first deceive.
This is the worst part. We're all sitting around here like it's shocking that the tab for TMX is now $34 billion when the private sector had a plan to do it for $7.4 billion and it would have been operational in 2019. How has this happened? Well, this is what happens when governments get involved. How on earth is that even a question? This happened because the government would not back their own decision, caused delays, uncertainty and chaos and funded opponents to the project they approved while pretending they didn't.
This is a very deliberate agenda. It all comes from an anti-energy and anti-capitalist ideology. There is not a single reason why this government had to purchase TMX. All this government had to do was stand by the approval, assert federal jurisdiction and get the indigenous consultation right, which they should have remedied by doing it with northern gateway but lost that opportunity.
They should have been prepared to back Canada's reputation and our world-class regulatory expertise. They should have been prepared to back the private sector proponent after they gave them approval. They should have used every tool in their tool box to open a path for the private sector to pay the bills, to make their investment and to build a major project that would benefit all of Canada for generations to come, show Canada as reliable to its allies and get better prices for Canadians. These are all the ways that, as we all know—or maybe only Conservatives know—energy infrastructure and energy transportation are absolutely critical to the everyday standard of living and quality of life of Canadians and underpin the entire economy.
The regulatory and fiscal approach of this government is to force unrealistic targets and timelines on electricity generators, distributors and providers. They have promised and failed to implement the ITCs. They're still going back and forth on what the final version of the CERs might look like. There's the asinine exclusion of small and medium-sized Canadian builders, entrepreneurs and providers—even all of the insane exclusions that have anything to do with energy development and oil and gas—from any of the programs that they claim are all about innovation and technology. They're actually just about taxpayer dollars disappearing into the ether instead of enabling and opening the road for private sector proponents, experts, innovators, risk-takers and entrepreneurs to do the work that has built this country. This is after nine long, excruciating, painful, harmful years for the people I represent and for every Canadian whose livelihood, standard of living, and affordability depend on resource development in Canada.
I want to thank the witnesses for being here. I hope they will be able to come back. I hope they will give extensive written submissions. I hope we can pull this out of the fire for the best interests of all of Canada.
This is why I will be supporting our colleague Charlie's motion. I would just offer, if you would accept it, a friendly amendment to insert the words “that this study occur as soon as possible and supersede all other work of the committee”.
Charlie, thank you for finally telling the truth and admitting it. I know that you've always known it. It's these guys who are talking with a forked tongue.
The truth is that the emissions cap is designed to be a production cap, which is designed to put Canadian energy businesses and workers out of jobs. It is intentionally designed to kill their development and their businesses. It is intentionally designed to make unemployed the people I represent in northern Alberta, the people my colleague represents in Saskatchewan and the people my colleague from New Brunswick represents. Atlantic Canadians, as you know, have worked with Albertans throughout our country to build up our respective provinces to the benefit of this entire country.
If only this government would get out of the way, stop gatekeeping and let Canada take the leadership role in global critical minerals, LNG, oil of all kinds and natural gas that we should be taking in this world. I think it is more important than ever that we have this discussion about how to reverse this poisonous, wrong-headed, big-government, big-company, colluding agenda; get back to a place where our regulatory and fiscal regime attracts investment and enables private sector proponents to do the work on which they are experts; be realistic about timelines and targets; and deliver actual outcomes and objectives, not a bunch of rhetoric and virtue-signalling baloney.
Conservatives oppose the emissions cap because we know it is a cap on production and is designed to put oil and gas workers and businesses out of work.
