Madam Speaker, undoubtedly the member who represents Churchill River, Saskatchewan, had good reasons for bringing this private member's motion to the floor of the House. I appreciate what his colleague had to say as well.
There is one advantage of being a little older. I remember very well, having lived in what is a remote area, the first time the power came to my farm. I got rid of the old 32 volt wind charger and carrying batteries out of the basement. It also gave me a great thrill when I watched the natural gas pipeline coming in. When I heard the member speak, it crossed my mind that the natural gas pipeline was laid at a speed of about three miles an hour.
My colleague in his motion is referring to unserviced regions. I was busy last summer watching a gas line come in from a little place called Beulah, North Dakota, right beside Bismarck. They were coming north into the oil fields in my constituency. It was taking carbon dioxide gas and under pressure making it a liquid. There was co-operation between two companies and two countries.
A little story about that really angered me this summer. The contract to lay the pipe from south of the 49th parallel to the Weyburn oil fields came to a standstill because of government regulations.
There were piles of steel pipe, grey in colour. I do not know why they were 52 feet long and only 12 inches in diameter, but the laying of pipe was stopped at the border. There was no further development. The reason was that on each pipe 51 feet by 12 inches was indicated. The National Energy Board said, even though it was going four feet below ground, that had to be changed into metric. Steel stencils had to be made and each pipe had to be resprayed before it went into the ground.
I tell the House this story because the member for Churchill should realize what would have to take place. I am assuming he is intending to go north into Saskatchewan, and indeed there would be a number of problems. If it was going north it would require industry input. Otherwise the cost to go through rocky terrain would be almost prohibitive.
I do not know of any place where a natural gas pipeline could be installed above ground. I am not sure if that is possible. However I do know in Alberta, which has 276,000 kilometres of natural gas pipeline, that almost half of it is faulty. Can we imagine what it would be like and the cost to do so? I am not saying it would be impossible.
We have to look at going into the north in another way. With the cost of land acquisition and the environment protection which the north wants and deserves, I am not sure whether it is totally possible. This looks good on paper. It sounds like it is easy to accomplish. If we asked the federal government to sponsor it, what would we do? Would we go back to the provinces where the utilities remain with them?
Saskatchewan Energy in my province committed $50 million in 1999 to the expansion of natural gas pipelines. That is a lot of money for me but not a lot of money when it comes to laying pipelines. It is not a lot of money when it is necessary to go under a body of water, cross several highways and other obstacles.
I want members to imagine 50 miles of solid rock and how deep it would have to be. Natural gas is something like propane. It can freeze even in tanks that heat homes. Saskatchewan provided its school buses with propane gas. It has since taken it out because too many buses would not start at -40°. We would have to make sure there was some way. It would be extremely expensive.
The revenues of Saskatchewan Energy in 1998 were $367 million and it made a 10% profit without municipal help, without industry help and without individual help. It had all these things going on without environment approval. The bill sounds very good, but without all these other things being in place it would not work out. Saskatchewan Energy is having difficulties in that it had to stop its own program of delivering natural gas to farms because $50 million would not take up the new customers.
For this reason and many others I cannot support the motion. I support the intent and I would support a study, but I cannot support the government becoming involved in a massive project such as this one. We are not ready for it. I do not think the groundwork has been done. For those reasons, and with all due respect to my colleague from Churchill River, I simply cannot support the private member's motion.