Mr. Speaker, the drawing card of the energy east project was the fact that we perhaps could have a refinery at the end of it in New Brunswick, which would process the bitumen from Alberta and turn it into materials that we would need in Canada, instead of having to import them from elsewhere in the world. It sounds like a great idea.
One of the first studies we did at the natural resources committee was on the oil and gas industry in Canada. At one point we had witnesses before us from Irving Oil in New Brunswick and asked them point blank if energy east were in Saint John today, when would those refineries be built. The answer was maybe in five years or 10 years, or maybe never. It would depend on the economics of the whole project.
When we talk about whether we want refineries built over there at the end of a long pipeline, the economic argument comes into play. We may never have seen those refineries. The oil might just have ended up being shipped to other countries.
Getting back to the whole pipeline question in general, if we want to talk about the Trans Mountain expansion project, Canadians need to understand, and I do not know if a lot of them do, that it is an expansion project. This is about expanding the footprint of the oil sands in Alberta; it is not about business as usual. This is about expanding our production of oil at a time when the world is looking to decrease it.