Mr. Speaker, it is an absolute honour and privilege to rise on this item of debate today because it gives me a chance to talk a bit about my journey as a member of Parliament over the last 18 months with regard to this issue, the overall issue being the development of Canada's great wealth of natural resources in the oil sands in Alberta.
It has been fascinating to listen to the debate on this. When I started in May 2011, one of the first things I was exposed to in debate was the complete, almost ideological opposition to the development of this great wealth of natural resources.
As an Albertan and as someone who represents a core Calgary riding with many constituents who are directly employed by the energy industry, and I think I speak on behalf of many of them, if not all of them, this resource needs to be developed strategically. It needs to be developed with a sense of environmental stewardship. It also needs to be contextualized within the context of how important it is to the economy as a whole, not just to Calgary, not just to Alberta, but to the country as a nation-building resource. We would be hard pressed to find anyone in the House who would disagree with me on that point, which is why it has been so fascinating to listen to the rhetoric from members across the aisle on this file.
One of the first items of debate I had the experience of participating in was the NDP's anti-trade mission to Washington to lobby against certain energy infrastructure projects. I do not think anyone has really talked in detail today about the cost of capital and how much it actually costs to develop the oil sands. In order for major infrastructure projects to go through, investment needs to be made in them. I found it very rich to hear the NDP natural resource critic talk about net benefit to Canada and developing the energy sector when he supported an NDP anti-trade mission that sought to limit market access for Canada's natural resource sector.
Anybody who is involved in the natural resource sector would know that the price differential for our oil is impacted because of access to markets.
We should be proud of our environmentally responsible development of energy infrastructure that provides our energy which is developed in a country that has democratic principles, that is an energy producing nation that actually catalogues and reports on greenhouse gas emissions, has stringent greenhouse gas emission requirements and has a stringent environmental assessment review framework on the front end through development and on the enforcement side of things. This is something we should seek to develop instead of essentially telling other governments not to take our resources.
For the NDP members to take this position and then all of a sudden try to proclaim, as they have on many panels that I have been on, that they are the champions of Calgary, Alberta and Canada's natural resource sector is quite rich.
When we look as well at the long-term investment potential of our natural resource sector, we have to keep in mind the principles of transparency, clarity and predictability and that is really what we tried to get at with the announcement that our government made on Friday.
We understand as a government that we need to have foreign investment in our natural resource sector to ensure that the prosperity that we see out of that sector will continue well into the future. I believe the Prime Minister's quote was “Generations of Canadians have worked to take the government out of private sector industry in Canada.” We should not be seek to have state-owned enterprises now come back into it, that the balance of capital investment into this strategic resource is done in a measured way. However, those rules need to be transparent and predictable and that is exactly what we achieved on Friday.
State-owned enterprise capital is something we need to be very careful about as a nation. The rules that we put in place now provide predictability to the natural resource sector, to the energy sector, by outlining exactly what we need.
The Prime Minister said it in question period today. We talked about exceptional circumstances. He was very clear in saying that we would not put forward majority control of a company that was owned by a state-owned enterprise. That was very clear today.
Going forward, I believe these new rules will be well received by our investment community, by the downtown sector in Calgary, because they provide that clarity on what the rules are.
Moreover, it is important to note today, if it has not been done already, how important this sector is to the Canadian economy. Time after time in the House, I listen to my colleagues opposite absolutely denigrate this sector. This sector produces over 600,000 jobs across the country, not only in my great home province of Alberta but in every province.
It produces billions of dollars of government revenue for the very social programs that we hope to support and see sustained well into the future. Moreover, there is a focus in Canada, across industry, in government and at the provincial level as well, to ensure these resources are developed in the most environmentally responsible way possible.
As a new member of Parliament, it has been somewhat stunning to hear the rhetoric and ideology coming across from my colleagues opposite on this issue. Earlier this year the NDP leader came out and talked about the concept of Dutch disease. He expressed that the natural resource sector and the energy sector was a disease or some sort of blight on the Canadian economy.
If we look at the Statistics Canada numbers with regard to the manufacturing sector in Canada over the last year, I believe we will see good growth and good sustainment of manufacturing jobs. Why? Because Canada is one of the leaders in the G7 with regard to job creation despite a global economy that is still fragile.
A number we like to produce over and over again is that the Canadian economy, since the end of the recession, has created nearly 900,000 net new jobs. We should be very proud of that. However, we should also point to the energy sector's contribution to that. There are so many people across the country who are employed because of the natural resources sector.
Our government will do everything possible to ensure that we are credible regulators within the environment sector and that we have clarity in our investment guidelines. The announcement that we made on Friday to clarify these rules did exactly that.
It talked about the importance of our natural resources sector to the economy. It talked about the fact that our government was the only party right now that stood in the House and talked about balance and about the need to push forward economic growth, while maintaining a strong environmental stewardship program. We are the only party that talks about balance when it comes to setting investment rules that are clear, predictable, timely and easily interpreted by our investment community.
Moreover, we are the one party that has consistently talked about the fact that all sectors of the economy are vital to Canada holding its own as a nation that sits atop of developed countries with regard to job creation and job growth.
The additional transparency that was provided in the ruling on Friday is something that Canadians will look back at 5 or 10 years from now and say that this was really a legacy of the Conservative government and that this was something that would ensure the natural resource sector was developed in a way that would ensure growth and jobs for years to come. Also, that is not this piecemeal, knee-jerk reaction that we hear from the NDP members with their rhetoric.
The NDP natural resources critic, who I have respect for, simply said that the NDP would not approve this deal. There was no rationale, outside of the NDP ideological opposition to trade and growth. It is the same with the Liberal Party. We have talked about the front runners in the Liberal leadership campaign whose approach is to rubber-stamp those deals.
The approach we have come forward with, certainly for the constituents and stakeholders I have talked to over the last 72 hours, is the right one. It is a balanced approach. It is one that is clear. It is one that will ensure we have growth in that sector, but one that is balanced with the knowledge that the involvement of state-owned enterprises is contextualized within a framework that Canadians accept and trust.
We have that balance right here.