Thank you.
I'm here also to show support for my colleagues, my first nations brothers and sisters.
It's a very interesting era that we're in right now. Just to give you a little history about me, I'm also a journeyman millwright by trade. As one of my last jobs as a tradesman, I was the lead rotating specialist for Royal Dutch Shell. I come from Alberta, and I've seen about five major national companies leave the oil game. I've seen towns in much of our region with shortages in their food banks.
What I don't understand about this tanker moratorium is that there's no other tanker moratorium on other coastlines in Canada. You have oil coming in from Saudi Arabia, up and down the St. Lawrence River right now.
I'm 100% an environmentalist as well, but I'm also 100% into the economy so that I can provide purpose and get people to work. This tanker ban is not just going to hurt us at the moment, which it is doing, but it's going to hurt future generations. I have four daughters at home, and I want to provide a better education for them. I can't do that on social assistance.
The government of today announced that it's going to try to build a new fiscal relationship between first nations in a nation-to-nation conversation. It shouldn't be played out in the media. It should be played out with actions. Actions speak louder than words.
There were questions on what happens when the oil spills. I've dealt with some of the largest oil spills in Alberta within our traditional lands. What I do is I make them clean it up. In Alberta, I tell the Alberta energy regulator that they have to change their standards, they have to improve their standards so that when something is cleaned up, it's cleaned up 100%. Right now, standards are low. They've lowered standards so they could increase production. We could change that. We're in an era where we need to think outside the box, where we need innovation and technology, and we have that.
Everything in this room is touched by oil. Somehow that oil gets to China and then we buy it back in products. This will affect everybody in Canada. We need to create jobs. We need to help everybody.
Yes, as first nations, we are stewards of the land. I'm a hunter, a fisher, and a trapper, and I teach my culture and my language to my kids. In Treaty 8 territory, we come from the wealthiest land among us. There have been trillions of dollars taken out of our natural resources and we haven't seen a fair percentage of that.
My colleagues and friends here have a project where we could start getting our own sustainability. I'm not one to look for a handout, not one bit. I want to have the ability to shape our own destiny. With this tanker moratorium, you guys are killing those opportunities for the future. I'm not placing blame, but there's a possibility of that happening.
Thank you.