Mr. Speaker, I am privileged to be able to put a question to my friend from Cariboo—Prince George. He is my friend. I do not say that merely as a nicety. We are friends. However, I do not agree with him that this project is in the national interest.
It is important for Canadians to know that when the National Energy Board reviewed the Kinder Morgan project, it refused to hear evidence from Unifor, the largest union representing workers in the oil sands. It refused to hear evidence from Unifor, because the National Energy Board ruled that jobs and the economy were outside its mandate in reviewing the project. Therefore, it cannot be said that the economic impact of this project has been reviewed.
It is interesting to know that what Unifor wanted to present to the National Energy Board was evidence that the Trans Mountain pipeline, Kinder Morgan's expansion, would hurt Canadian jobs and cost Canadian jobs.
I would ask my hon. colleague if he does not agree with me that we should follow the plan for the expansion and development of the oil sands that came from Peter Lougheed. That was the era when the idea was put forward that Alberta's economy would benefit from mining bitumen and processing it in Alberta. The reason this will cost Canadian jobs, according to Unifor, is that shipping raw bitumen to refineries in other countries will hurt Canadian jobs and actually lead to the closing of the Chevron refinery in Burnaby, because it does not have the capacity to process raw bitumen.
Why do the Conservatives prefer creating jobs in other countries, in refineries in other countries, rather than processing the material and creating jobs in Alberta?