Madam Speaker, the world needs Canada's oil, and global oil demand will continue to grow for decades, especially in the world's most populated countries. China's economy is expanding at over 6% annually and with it Chinese energy needs grow. Meanwhile, India produces only one-quarter of the oil the Indian people need with economic growth of over 7% a year and projections that the Indian economy will surpass the American economy by 2040. While the development of and desire for renewable and alternative energy grows worldwide, so too does demand for available, affordable, abundant oil.
The International Energy Agency projects demand to reach 99 million barrels a day by the end of 2017. The potential for Canada's global role as a responsible supplier of energy and of technology and regulatory expertise is boundless, but it is dependent on Canada being connected to major export markets around the world, especially while the United States—both Canada's biggest importer and now most significant energy competitor—is reducing costs and red tape, and is ramping up domestic oil production to enhance American energy independence.
Canada is the sixth-largest producer of oil in the world, with the third-largest proven oil reserves of any country on earth, the vast majority being in the oil sands. Unlike most major oil producers globally, Canada is a stable and free democracy with the most stringent environmental regulations and enforcement along with human rights, labour standards, and a fundamental philosophy that natural resources belong to citizens, so the wealth derived from energy development benefits the people broadly and in multiple ways. Despite these competitive and capacity advantages, only 4% of the world's daily oil production comes from Canada, which is forced to be a global oil price taker, not a price maker.
These realities are significant because the sustainability and future of oil and gas development in Canada are key to Canada's long-term prosperity overall and to the livelihoods of hundreds of thousands of Canadians across the country right now.
Politics in British Columbia put the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion at risk, with NDP and Green Party leaders pledging to pursue legal action. This $7.4 billion dollar project would create 15,000 jobs in Alberta and B.C. The Conference Board of Canada says it is expected to generate at least $46.7 billion in government revenues and the equivalent of more than 40,000 jobs from economic spinoffs of this single project alone. It would create desperately needed jobs in Alberta while helping grow British Columbia's economy.
Pipelines are crucial economic transportation infrastructure, which Canada needs in all directions to diversify export markets, reduce reliance on the U.S., and enhance Canada's own energy independence and security.
However, the growing inflammatory ideological activism around pipelines threatens prosperity and opportunity for all Canadians, sometimes in the most crass and dishonest ways. Around 32,000 Métis and first nations people work in Canada's natural resource sector. In Lakeland and around Alberta, first nations are very active in oil and gas across the value chain, in upstream exploration and production, and in service, supply, and technology.
However, the Liberals and the left often use first nations as pawns in their anti-energy rhetoric, implying all first nations and Métis people are against it, but AFN Chief Perry Bellegarde confirms that 500 of the 630 first nations in Canada are open to pipelines and support petroleum development. In fact, 50 first nations actively support the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion in particular.
Representing a riding that includes eight first nations and Métis communities in northern rural Alberta, and as a person who happens to be part Ojibwa myself, I am disturbed and disgusted by the left's constant misrepresentation of the perspective on energy development of the majority of first nations in Canada. First nations across western Canada want more pipelines and are increasingly agitating publicly for themselves, because that infrastructure is as crucial to the lifeblood of their communities and to opportunities for young people as anywhere else.
The debate over pipelines in Canada is as much about trust as it is about economics. It has been odd to watch the minister—sometimes aggressively and sometimes just bewildered—express clear frustration that Albertans are just not grateful enough for their pipeline approvals, as if he is not sure why we have the gall to still be so uppity, or as if we are just so hard to please, but the Liberals contradict themselves about oil and gas depending on where they are or to whom they are talking, because for the Liberals, it is about politics. That is why proponents on all sides of the pipeline debate have a hard time believing the Liberal rhetoric.
The Liberals' anti-Canadian energy agenda is obvious. They froze pipeline applications, delaying them for months, and launched four major regulatory reviews while citing interim measures that did not actually include any new aspects, except for the proposal of attaching upstream emissions to pipeline approvals, a standard they do not apply to any other major infrastructure projects anywhere in Canada, and more layers of administration and costs. This uncertainty deters investment and escalates job losses at the very worst time.
The Prime Minister told the world that Canada will phase out the oil sands and left the Minister of Natural Resources at home during trips in the U.S. focusing on trade and energy; the Minister of Environment and Climate Change, who seems to call the shots, was celebrated by U.S. lobbyists who explicitly oppose Canadian pipelines; and the new chief of staff of the Minister of Natural Resources wants to keep Canadian oil in the ground, while the NEB, one of the most renowned regulators in the world, is being dismantled and sent to Ottawa.
On the same day the Liberals accepted the independent expert recommendation to approve the Trans Mountain and Line 3 expansions, the Prime Minister killed the only actual new proposal to tidewater, the northern gateway pipeline, along with 31 first nations equity partnerships of $2 billion. It was the first time a Prime Minister overruled or rejected a regulator's independent advice, which was based on the exact same process and evidence as the projects approved by the Liberals. Their talk of science and consultation is so empty, just like the tanker ban, which was directed by the Prime Minister in mandate letters before there was a single environmental safety or economic study, and ultimately absolutely no consultation with first nations about the ban, which applies to only one specific coast, astoundingly, because that incoherence is a product of politics and ideology driving policy and legislation.
All Canadians should be concerned when ideological activism dictates government action. A 36-page Elections Canada report confirms the influence of foreign groups on Canadian democracy. At least three groups violated Canadian elections law, circumventing spending limits to push their anti-Canadian energy agenda to serve American business and energy interests. The truth is that many anti-Canadian energy groups are funded by American companies precisely to prevent securing diverse export markets for Canadian oil, but the need to accelerate that access has never been more urgent.
Canadian pipelines are sustainable, safe, and efficient, and 1.25 million more barrels of oil a day are transported across Canada through increased pipeline capacity approved under the previous Conservative government through four major pipelines and several others.
Thousands of Canadians lost their jobs since 2015, with people in some provinces and regions hit harder than others. The $50 billion loss of investment in Canada's energy sector is the equivalent of losing 75% of auto manufacturing and all of the aerospace sector last year.
The economic and social consequences are immense: spikes in bankruptcies, foreclosures, food bank use, crime, domestic violence, family breakdowns, suicides. The losses in the energy sector are rippling through other sectors and across Canada. Pipelines will get people back to work in the near term and will sustain oil and gas, which are also the biggest investors in Canadian renewable and alternative energy development long into the future, yet Albertans in particular cannot seem to get themselves on the Liberals' priority list. The response by the Liberals to out-of-work energy workers is subsidies for other sectors and other countries, handouts to provincial governments, with added roadblocks and conditions to private sector investments like pipelines that would actually create jobs for middle-class Canadians, about whom the Liberals purport to care. The mythical social licence is always just out of reach, and it is now clear that no amount of taxing or begging or grovelling will earn it from those who never intend to grant it.
Oil sands development supports about 400,000 jobs across Canada, with thousands of businesses in every province directly dependent on the resource. Those jobs could reach 700,000 by 2030. They provide tax revenue and support major charitable, post-secondary, community, R & D, and education investments, and livelihoods, across Canada, increasing the standard of living in every community.
Alberta has long been a driving force in Canada's economy and a reliable partner in confederation. As a first generation Albertan, born and raised, I have only ever known my province as a young, dynamic, culturally and economically diverse, pioneering place, built by people from everywhere else in Canada, like my family from Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and Ontario, single-handedly creating nine out of 10 jobs in Canada as recently as 2014.
Albertans are hard-working and generous, contributing $200 billion between 2000 and 2014 to help lift Canadians in all regions. Even while Albertans lost more jobs than at any other time since Pierre Trudeau was in office, they continue to send billions more to the federal government than they receive in services.
This is an issue of national unity. The Prime Minister must support this motion.