Mr. Speaker, I wish to ask the hon. minister a question in reference to his prologue where he talked about the Prime Minister's statements about Canada being an energy superpower.
Does he also take into account the fact that in his natural resources energy outlook, the situation with natural gas in Canada is so critical that by 2015 we may have to abrogate the proportionality clause in NAFTA in order to keep our own homes and businesses heated in the winter?
When the minister talks about a superpower, he is probably talking about the oil sands where we see development that basically has one of the lowest energy returns for investments in the whole world in terms of a source of fossil fuels. When we are talking about an energy superpower, we are talking about a country where things are not going exactly right.
We saw the Prime Minister over in Russia in July trying to set up a deal with Vladimir Putin for liquefied natural gas to export into Canada. That does not sound like a superpower. It sounds like we have a country with serious conditions in our energy industries that may not be apparent right now but, by the minister's own natural resources outlook, are coming very quickly for Canada.
I would love to support the minister's budget but I want to know that his budget will be directed in a fashion that can return to Canadians an assurance that they will have a future in the kinds of energies that we are producing. What is this superpower that we are talking about?