Mr. Speaker, I thank my hon. colleague for Winnipeg North for that question, because it is the subject of a lot of public debate and it needs to be addressed.
I know that the pipeline industry tried to seize on Lac-Mégantic as an argument for pipelines in a way that was seen at the time as a bit inappropriate, given the tragedy that had occurred.
Pipelines can transport many goods. If we are talking about refined petroleum products, I do not know of anyone who is opposed to pipelines moving refined goods, because the impact of a spill is relatively minor and we are keeping the jobs in Canada. However, the pipeline projects that are currently the subject of the greatest debate are Keystone, Enbridge, Kinder Morgan, and Energy East, and their common goal to move bitumen as a raw material to tidewater to be shipped to another country for refining.
I mentioned diluent earlier, which is a toxic fossil fuel condensate. Enbridge proposed to buy it from Saudi Arabia, bring it in tankers to Kitimat, put it in a pipeline running from Kitimat to northern Alberta, and then stir it into solid bitumen, because the solid bitumen, being a solid, will not flow. Enbridge would then stir in the diluent that it imported to make a mix called dilbit to put in a pipeline running in the other direction, sending it to a tanker to go somewhere else, maybe China, for refining.
The position of the Green Party is that we do not support any pipeline if the intention is to use it to ship dilbit. It is an extremely dangerous commodity in that when it spills, as the Kalamazoo River spill in Michigan has shown us, it is virtually impossible to clean up. It makes much more sense economically, as it appears new Premier Notley wants to do, to refine product in Alberta rather than try to find dangerous pipelines for risky tankers.