Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to rise again on the issue of pipeline capacity in Canada. I asked this question way back in November, after the government had gone with its Goldilocks approach to approving one pipeline and denying another in the northern gateway pipeline.
That was the question I asked. The Prime Minister, in his comments at the press conference where he killed northern gateway, said that he would not accept any political arguments against the Trans Mountain pipeline, which was approved, but then based entirely on political arguments, he killed the northern gateway pipeline and the thousands of jobs that would have gone along with it. Why was the regulatory process that was so good for the Trans Mountain pipeline that allowed the government to approve it, so bad for northern gateway? Why did the government kill that pipeline and the thousands of the jobs that would have gone along with it?
Since that time, we have seen a degradation of the investment climate in the country, certainly in the energy sector. An article in the Calgary Herald on March 31 stated:
ConocoPhillips’ $17.7 billion selloff of most of its Canadian business to Cenovus Energy Inc. accelerates the Canadianization of the oilsands. This isn’t an international retreat any more, it is a vote of non-confidence in Canadian energy versus other opportunities.
It went on to say:
It was not the intention of Canadian policy makers to scare off so much foreign capital, yet they wear a big part of the blame because they made it harder to get anything done in the oilsands, by stretching out pipeline reviews, imposing carbon taxes, capping oilsands development.
That is exactly what has happened. We have seen a flight of foreign capital, foreign investment, from the oil sands just in the last number of weeks. Major companies like Statoil, Shell, and ConocoPhillips have abandoned the Canadian oil sands to the tune of tens of billions of dollars.
What does that mean? That means the recovery in the oil sands is more difficult. That means the hundreds of thousands of out-of-work energy workers are going to find it harder to get jobs in the energy sector in Alberta. We have seen again in the budget, which has been tabled since the question was asked, that the government went out of its way to kick the energy sector when it was down. It went out of its way to eliminate important incentives for oil and gas exploration. It went out of its way to kill exploration tax credits which helped drilling companies expand and hire Canadian workers. That is what this is all about, getting Canadian workers back on the job.
This decision to kill the northern gateway pipeline was not based on evidence, was not based on science, and was not based on anything other than the government's political ideology.
I hope we will not hear the same prepared talking points about all that the Liberals have done in one year compared to the previous government. They have done nothing but issue a press release. They have not built a single metre of pipeline on the Trans Mountain or Line 3 pipelines. I hope the prepared talking points from the parliamentary secretary will not simply repeat those talking points, but will say why the government killed the northern gateway pipeline and all the jobs that went along with it.