Mr. Speaker, it does not matter if it is Nexen or any particular employer, and it does not matter if it is in the energy sector.
What the NDP fails to understand is that Alberta is an economic engine. I believe it remained the only have-province throughout the economic downturn we had in Canada, and it is continuing to grow. In my riding the most common sign we see is “help wanted”. I have employers, virtually in every sector, whether it is agricultural, oil and gas or service, coming to me and saying that they cannot get Canadians to do the job. They go through the LMO process, a process that vets, verifies and substantiates the fact that qualified Canadians are not able to do the job. They then go and seek temporary foreign workers to help fill that particular void.
Whether it is Nexen or any other oil sands company, there will be tens of thousands of new jobs created in Alberta and across this country. The entire supply chain for the oil sands and all of the energy activity that happens in Alberta is shared across this country, as are all of the economic benefits. We are going to need skilled workers.
I would just like to highlight to my hon. colleague that is not just the folks who have welding certificates or who are engineers or technologists. For every one of those jobs that is created there is an unskilled or semi-skilled job created in the service industry, whether it is serving coffee, cleaning a hotel or doing any of those other kinds of jobs, and there are not enough people in Alberta to currently fill those jobs.