Madam Speaker, let us be honest. The member opposite wants to talk about jobs and when the NDP members start talking about Canadian jobs, they are actually speaking about the destruction of them. When they stand and speak it is about destroying hundreds of thousands of jobs. I am going to talk about that.
As I said on November 18, we believe we can move ahead with the proper environmental protections and the proper economic development. We are going to continue to do that for Canadians. We are going to continue to provide them with more jobs and more opportunities. We are going to do that with a balance, and we certainly do not find a balance on the other side of the House. Trying to find a job-creating project that the NDP actually supports is like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Does the NDP support oil jobs? Absolutely not. Every time the member opposite stands in this House it is to speak against the economic opportunities that are creating hundreds of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars in economic growth across this country. On Keystone XL, her party decided her opposition was not good enough to keep it in Canada, it sent her to our largest trading partner, the United States, and told it to reject a project that would create 140,000 jobs for Canadians. That is shameful.
It does not stop there. Whether it is the northern gateway, the Trans Mountain pipeline, Joslyn mine, or any other project that would provide jobs in our energy sector, the NDP and the member opposite firmly stand against Canadian job creators. It does not just stop at our oil sector. Shale gas, definitely not. Jobs in the nuclear sector, definitely not. In its submission to the Greenpeace election 2008 questionnaire, the NDP said, “Canada's New Democrats do not support nuclear energy. Nuclear energy is dangerous, prohibitively expensive and far from a solution to climate change”. That is another extreme position. That is 30,000 jobs across Canada which the NDP is saying no to.
Surely the NDP could at least support the forestry sector. Shockingly no, it cannot even do that. Let us listen to the NDP member for Winnipeg Centre who said at committee that we should not “be talking about a better way to cut down more trees and build with materials that begin to rot the moment you use it. We should be talking about ways to build without” wood.
While the NDP takes the puzzling position of supporting job creation by opposing all job-creating projects in our natural resources sector, our government has taken a different approach. We understand Canada is blessed with an abundance of natural resources that provide hundreds of thousands of jobs across this country and provide billions in economic growth. Over the next 10 years, there is $500 billion in potential investment in our natural resources sector. Gaining this investment is not guaranteed. It is not a foregone conclusion that requires us to sit back and watch it happen. We are fighting with countries around the world for this investment and the jobs that come with it. We must act to create the conditions necessary to put Canada's economy and environment on a firm footing going forward.
While the member and her party opposite continue to stand in the way of job growth in this country, our government will not apologize for doing what is necessary to put Canadians to work in good high-paying jobs.