Madam Speaker, the debate so far today has been contaminated by so many claims that are contrafactual. In other words, the facts are clear, but the conversation in this place is ignoring them.
For instance, the claim was made that shipping bitumen is safer in a pipeline. The opposite is true.
When the question at issue is the safety of pipelines versus trains, the critical point is to know what product is being shipped. If it is Bakken shale, which is what blew up in Lac-Mégantic, it is clear it should not be on a train, but solid bitumen can only be put in a pipeline once it has been made more dangerous by adding diluent, which doubles the shipment times as a result of making it into a substance that can flow. Diluted bitumen in a pipeline, once spilled, cannot be cleaned up, but solid bitumen on a train is the safest way to move solid bitumen. That is relevant to the first non-fact.
The second non-fact is the idea that diluted bitumen can be cleaned up. The member for Skeena—Bulkley Valley already mentioned this point, but let me point out two incontrovertible scientific studies that were ignored by the National Energy Board.
I intervened in the National Energy Board process. The process was flawed from the get-go by lack of procedural fairness and the abuse of the rights of intervenors in that process, and the courts will rule on that. However, I do need to say that the National Academy of Sciences in the United States—their premier scientific body—and the Royal Society of Canada expert panel both found that bitumen mixed with diluent does not, at this point, have any science to justify the claim that it can be cleaned up. It cannot. It still is not cleaned up in the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, and no matter how much we now hear from Liberals what we used to hear from Conservatives, the very well-modulated Kennedyesque tones do not make non-facts into facts.