Mr. Speaker, the consultation process was very clear. This is a government that said to the United States, “Look, we want a quick and dirty deal. What do we have to do?” and the United States said, “Here, sign this”. That was the end of consultation.
We asked the industry, where were they? They were not at the table. We have talked to representatives of industry. Representatives of industry have phoned us. We have met with them. They said again and again, “We went to this government and we said this deal is a bad deal”.
They were all over the media saying that this was a bad deal. Not only has the deal not improved since industry first spoke up, but the deal has become worse in the meantime. There was no consultation because the government was not interested in the long term interests of the resource sector.
The government will give $1.5 billion a year in subsidies to the Alberta oil and gas industry, but we have had community after community right across this country go down. They were begging for loan guarantees and support to see them through. They were starved of support. There are communities like Ignace, Red Rock, Kenora, Opasatika, Béarn and Malartic that have gone down, and the government has sat back and watched them go down.