Madam Speaker, I did not totally understand the reference to bowing down and praying to British Columbia, but I greatly love the place. If my friend from Edmonton has not been there, he should certainly come by. British Columbia is beautiful. I do not know if it is worthy of praying to necessarily, but it is certainly a remarkable place.
I suppose the question for my friend is this. There was this radical premier in his province one time who suggested that adding value to the natural gas that was coming out of Alberta back in the seventies, as somewhat of an ancient industry, was incredibly important and in fact went so far, that raging socialist, to suggest that exporting of that natural gas in its raw form be banned outright.
Premier Lougheed has been lauded for many things. Being a left-wing socialist was not one of them. One of the things he believed in was that building up to capacity to add value to the great wealth and natural endowments that we had as a country should be the centrepiece of any government, right or left, because these resources, particularly the non-renewable ones, only came once.
It seems to me as if we are simply willing to be energy and price takers at all times and hope that the world comes around once in a while to buy our product, rather than be innovative price leaders in many of our natural resources sectors, which would be a very good thing not just for Edmonton West and Alberta, but the entire country.
A little more courage, a little more energy into this debate I think would help Canadians understand that this is not science fiction. This is what countries that export natural resources to their best benefit have always been interested in. Our country used to be as well until his government took over and we lost half a million manufacturing jobs just while it was in office. What a record to run on when talking about jobs in Canada.