Mr. Speaker, I would like to salute my colleague from Abitibi—Témiscamingue, who is now part of our natural resources team and who, each day in the House, stands up for the people of Abitibi—Témiscamingue.
There is a real contradiction here. There is no balance right now. As the member just said, pipelines are not as safe. The number of pipeline leaks has doubled. Our record on climate change is horrendous. We rank 58th out of 61 countries, just above Kazakhstan. Canadians know full well that we can do better and that we need to do better.
We need a government that realizes that we can take care of our environment, create jobs with green and clean energy—which has enormous potential—and that we can also upgrade the value of industries such as the oil industry, where those value-added jobs are currently going.
The majority of oil used to be refined and produced in Alberta. Now, with the Conservative plan, very little of it would be. We are concerned that tens of thousands of jobs will be lost. We need to take a balanced approach, and the NDP will do just that in 2015.