Mr. Speaker, I will be splitting my time with the member for Aurora—Oak Ridges—Richmond Hill.
I am very sad to be here this evening. I am sorry that we have to have this debate once again.
It is certainly no secret that the last few years have been very hard in Alberta, not just for Calgarians but for all Albertans, and I would even say the nation, because the oil and gas sector is one that has a rich history of supplying jobs not only in Calgary where I was born and raised, not only in Alberta, but also right across this country. To use a term from Lemony Snicket, a series of unfortunate events brought us here today. It is a number of events that, I must admit, include those of the province, without question. The truth of the matter is that when we ask who created this price differential crisis, it was the Liberal government. It certainly had a lot to do with it.
I will mention some statistics that have been mentioned already this evening. As we know, the oil and gas sector has lost over $100 billion in investment and over 100,000 jobs. That is eight times the GDP and more jobs than the entire aerospace sector or five times the GDP and almost as many jobs as the entire auto sector. As I said, it is not just an Alberta crisis, it is a national crisis. The Canadian Energy Research Institute says that every job in Canadian upstream oil and gas creates two indirect and three induced jobs in other sectors across the country in other provinces. Every one job in the oil sands creates seven manufacturing jobs.
Another very disturbing fact is that a recent World Economic Forum report, which ranks countries based on a global competitiveness index, also reflects Canada's competitive disadvantage relative to the U.S. Canada ranks 12th out of 140 countries while the U.S. ranks first. I have a story directly related to this.
I was in the diplomatic corps prior to my job as a parliamentarian and, as such, I was very fortunate to be invited to an event in Calgary called U.S. Select, which the American ambassador to Canada attended. When I went to this event, it was terrifying because the American government, with much success, was luring away investment and jobs to the United States of America. That is not very hard to do at this time, unfortunately.
The Conservative government has an incredible track record of four pipelines, two of which increase coastal access. There is the TransCanada Keystone pipeline, Enbridge's Alberta Clipper, Kinder Morgan's Anchor Loop, increasing capacity to the west coast, as well as Enbridge's Line 9B reversal. Everyone knows the Liberals have killed two major pipelines: Enbridge's northern gateway pipeline, as well as TransCanada's energy east.
Who can forget the absolute horror of the Trans Mountain pipeline, which for us on this side of the House was like the plot to a bad horror film. Just when we thought it could not get any worse, it did. Every day we would think about the looming deadline and having to come up with something. Lo and behold, Canadians bought a pipeline. In this case, the butler did not do it. It was an ending we could not possibly have foreseen. As I said, it was like a plot to a bad horror movie.
Worse than that, Bill C-69, without question, in the minds of many Albertans and certainly in my mind, would kill the potential future of any energy projects going forward.
To add salt to the wound, the Prime Minister, the very individual who said he laments the existence of the tar sands, I believe is the term he used, had the actual nerve to show up in Calgary this week to try to play friendly and show that he is on the side of Albertans and Calgarians. I am afraid Calgarians know better.