Madam Speaker, the former Parliamentary Budget Officer has reported that the Conservatives left almost nine billion budgeted dollars unspent last year.
These dollars could have been spent to support job creation, retraining, the clean energy sector, and economic diversification. Their stance has simply been that we have a one-company town. When I went door-to-door in the last campaign, I talked to many oilfield workers who said that they were tired of the boom-and-bust economy and who wanted some economic diversification. However, the government completely drained the important funds for new energy sectors, such as energy efficiency, renewable energy, and clean-energy dollars budgeted for those sectors that could have created new retraining opportunities and jobs.
The Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, in my city of Edmonton, has tripled enrolment in their renewable energy training program. It has a 100% job creation record, when their students graduate.
The Conservatives simply missed the boat for 10 years. They could have invested and provided economic alternatives while the oil price was plummeting.
Even if and when we get those pipelines built, there will be an interim period in which we need to be employing our Canadians. I would like to hear the Conservatives defend why they let that $9 billion go by when we could have retrained workers in Canada.