Mr. Speaker, I think my friend is more direct and in many ways more honest about putting her perspective on the table than some who want to kind of dance around these questions.
Here is the thing about bitumen and energy resources in general. We all use these products. Whether we like it or not, these are all unavoidable parts of our lives. For those who are concerned about the potential risks of moving them and these sorts of things, then the resulting policy conclusion should be trying to reduce the use of these products. However, while we are still using them, while we still use everything from plastics, to jet fuel, to all kinds of different products that come from the energy sector, then we have to extract them and we have to move them. It is not realistic that we can do all of the downstream processing and product development at the very place where they are developed. It would not be practical to have all that labour right beside where these projects are developed. The alternative, then, is to not develop, to get resources from other countries, or to look for reasonable solutions to transportation.
I think all the evidence suggests that pipelines are better than rail from a safety perspective and from an environmental impact perspective, so it behooves us to be realistic and to look at what the resources are that we use and therefore the necessary mechanisms of transportation and development that are associated with them. If we do not look at that, then the alternative is simply that we put ourselves at a massive economic disadvantage compared to other countries that will do this development. Often they will do it in a less environmentally friendly and less human rights friendly way compared to what we are doing here in Canada, and we will find ourselves at a disadvantage for no particular benefit.
That is why I am in favour of development. I am particularly in favour of Canadian development because it is—