Mr. Speaker, this is an evolving issue. I think one of the things that has happened in the last 15 years is that the rate of change within the oil fields has been very hard to keep pace with, so the scope of the challenge has grown.
If we look at rail alone, in 2011 there were only 68,000 carloads of resource coming out of Alberta and moving through the rest of the country. Within two years, it doubled to more than 120,000 carloads. The rate of increase, the technological change, and what is being shipped is changing. Looking back 20 or 15 years does not provide a blueprint for the future.
We know that the product is more volatile than it used to be. We know that the direction it is moving is changing as we speak. We know that the rate of extraction and the rate of shipment has multiplied by at least double since the start of this decade. Going back and asking us what we would have done in 2008 or 2009 is not the issue.
The challenge in front of us now is that so much of this is moving by rail. We could shift to pipelines, but the pipelines do not have the capacity and are not technically sufficient in their structure to carry it. With that volatility now in play, it requires a response.
Looking to the future is where we need to focus. Looking backwards in time is not going to resolve the issue we have in front of us today.