Madam Speaker, I am sharing my time today with the hon. member for Louis-Saint-Laurent, which is an honour in itself for me.
As a life-long Albertan, I am proud of our world-leading energy sector. Alberta has long played an important role in Canada's economy and has attracted thousands of Canadians to pursue opportunities for themselves and for their families. Alberta has been the economic engine of Canada for decades, contributing direct and indirect employment, globally recognized innovation, world-renowned responsible energy regulation and development, and massive amounts of revenue to multiple levels of government.
This revenue provides programs and services supporting the standard of living for everyone in every province. Indeed, a strong Alberta means a strong Canada. However, the long-term sustainability of Canada's energy sector and Alberta's ability to offer prosperity for people across Canada long into the future depend on accessing new and diverse markets here at home and abroad. Maximizing the value of our country's resources internationally and enhancing our domestic energy independence and self-sufficiency are crucially important. Canada has the world's third-largest crude oil reserve, most of which is in the oil sands deposits of northern Alberta and those beginning to be developed in Saskatchewan.
My riding of Lakeland stretches across a large expanse of northern Alberta, situated between those oil sands reserves, with rural farming, forestry, and manufacturing communities and towns, a prairie province border city where the local economies are fuelled by the responsible development of conventional and heavy oil and natural gas. Lakeland is home to Portage-Pipeline Training Centre, unique in Canada, training people to build pipelines right where they are built. Pipelines start and cross in my riding.
Yet despite our country's powerful position among leading energy-rich nations, in our own country eastern Canadian refineries import an astounding 86% of their oil from the United States and from countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia. This is while Canada exports 97% of our oil production to the United States. There is no doubt Canada has an important global role to play in exporting our responsibly developed supply of energy for the world's needs, but it also makes very little sense that we are not completely meeting our own energy needs for all our fellow Canadians right here at home, simply because of a lack of infrastructure.
The energy east pipeline is an immediate shovel-ready project that would create thousands of much-needed, well-paying jobs for Canadians who are now seriously struggling. This pipeline is important for another reason: it would actually tie together eastern and western Canada physically, economically, and symbolically. To me, energy east really epitomizes the Canadian way: diverse communities with unique assets and characteristics, bound together across vast and varied geography. However, the Liberal government caused instability and uncertainty in the energy sector at the very worst time, during a severe and extended global oil price drop, through mixed messages, signals of impending increases of the fiscal and regulatory burden, and intended changes that are either unclear or will add extra time, layers, and costs to the approval process for important pipeline projects.
On this side, just like the energy developers and workers in Canada, we have always valued expanding economic growth while enhancing environmental stewardship through continuously advancing technologies and innovation. We unequivocally support the nation-building energy east pipeline.
I want to explain why all of this matters so much to me. My constituents, their families, their friends, their businesses, and their charities are being hurt by the job losses in the energy sector. It is easy for politicians in their bubble in Ottawa to rattle off stats and talking points and to pontificate about what is happening in Alberta, but I live side by side with hard-working, generous, and humble people who are anxious. Their livelihoods and futures are at risk and they live in communities sustained by businesses, charities, and public services that rely on a robust natural resources sector. In some cases, these communities are literally on the verge of becoming ghost towns. The people in Lakeland elected me to represent them and to advocate for them. I hope I am earning the confidence they lent me on October 19, and I will work hard to sustain it.
Members of the House may recall the Facebook post that went viral recently. A Lloydminster man named Ken Cundliffe wrote an open letter to the Prime Minister urging him to help Alberta. Mr. Cundliffe said that times were getting desperate for families and highlighted many problems in Alberta today, including unemployment, increased thefts, and mental health challenges. He rightly pointed out that many Canadians do not know how bad the situation is in Alberta. Mr. Cundliffe inspired me, so following his lead I would like to share some of the experiences of the people behind the StatsCan reports, news stories, and talking points.
Take, for example, a young family from rural Alberta. The mom is going back to school and the dad has worked tirelessly in oil and gas for many years. The couple lives on a rural acreage with their two school-aged kids about an hour away from town. On his way to work one morning recently, the dad received a phone call telling him that he no longer had a job. He lives in a rural community and there are not many other options for work, but houses are not selling and investments are lost. They are stuck.
Then there is the story of a married father with small children in Lloydminster. He worked in the oil sector for 20 years and lost his job not once but twice last year. Now he is working as a plumber's helper, but construction is at a virtual standstill right now. It is inevitable that he will be laid off yet again. What is worse, he has been a saver all of his life, putting money away for a rainy day, in what he thought would be stable oil-related stock. He has lost 60% of his overall wealth.
It is not just businesses directly related to oil and gas in Alberta that are suffering. People do not have the money for bigger SUVs they need for their expanding families to get around remote and rural areas. They do not have extra cash for a weekend trip into the city, dinner out, or kids' activities. Businesses are bleeding money daily and have cut wages, hours, benefits, or entire jobs to survive. Some have closed and others will close imminently.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars of construction equipment and other equipment sit idle in parking lots. Small and independent service and supply companies, individual contractors, and home-grown businesses, which are companies in name but families in practice, are barely staying afloat.
I recently heard about a man in his mid-50s who had worked his way up in a leading Canadian energy company that operates in Lakeland and throughout northern Alberta. He is now pinching pennies because he did not have another option except to retire early. He contributed his entire career as an ambitious worker and a skilled leader. This is not the way his career should end.
Let us not forget the skilled and educated apprentices whose careers have stopped before they started. Now they are jobless, stuck in an endless cycle of fleeting opportunities, and living in their parents' basements.
In his letter, Ken Cundliffe also mentioned that crime is increasing. Small, tight-knit rural communities that have never had problems with crime are being shocked that trucks are being stolen from driveways, children's toys stolen at Christmas, and armed robberies happening at local businesses like the Boyne Lake General Store. Not only are people losing their jobs, they are losing their sense of safety. One look at the Alberta police report online really illustrates the pure desperation of people who have lost everything.
This type of activity is not indicative of the rural Alberta community where I grew up or of the self-sufficient, generous, and tenacious communities that I represent in Lakeland. The decline of Alberta's economy happened quickly. Just over four short years ago, Alberta itself accounted for more than one-half of Canada's job creation, adding 100,000 jobs in 2011. Compare that to last year, after the election of the new provincial government, when Alberta lost the most jobs in one year since the 1980s when the Prime Minister's father introduced the NEP.
Alberta's unemployment rate was 7% last month, the highest it has been since 2010. In fact, Alberta EI claims have doubled in the last year. Little more than a year ago, Alberta's biggest and most persistent problem was having virtually no unemployment, a severe labour shortage, with businesses scrambling for Canadians who would be willing to work, and for temporary foreign workers. Now, after contributing so much to Canada, tens of thousands of people do not have jobs or the means to support their families.
I am a typical Albertan in a certain way. My family is from everywhere else in Canada. I am a first-generation Albertan, with family across Ontario, Quebec, and the Maritimes. My Nova Scotian and Newfoundlander parents moved to Alberta to build a future. Why? It was because there were countless jobs and opportunities to build the life they imagined and because they did not have any options where they were born. This is a common Alberta story. That is the Alberta I have always known, the one that punches beyond its weight in Confederation and in the world, the one that is a beacon of prosperity and opportunity for entrepreneurs, adventurers, inventors, investors, and dreamers. The province that is at once the builder of Canada is also built by Canadians from everywhere else, and that, as much as anything else, as much as jobs, investment, opportunities, and revenue, is why a strong Alberta means a strong Canada.
Albertans want the Liberal government to lead, to show that it understands and cares about the scale, magnitude, and long-term impacts of the challenges hitting Alberta the hardest, to which no community or province in Canada is immune. We need a plan. Energy east is the perfect opportunity to get Canadian energy to tidewater and to increase market access in a smart, responsible, and safe way. It is not a pipeline from a certain province or specific region or for a certain province or specific region. It is a pipeline for all of Canada that will transport Canadian oil to Canadian refineries, developed under globally renowned Canadian standards, while creating jobs for Canadians.
Let us become proponents together of contributing to the world this product that they need and want, and let us join in support of energy east. We need the Liberal government to immediately make a difference in the future of Alberta and for all of Canada. Let us all continue in earnest to get access to diverse international markets in--