Mr. Speaker, the approach the member has suggested and the measure he is speaking of, the expropriation and purchase of Trans Mountain, is, to quote Ronald Reagan, “I'm from the government and I'm here to help”. It is patently untrue. The vast majority of Albertans would say that if the government got out of our way, we could get the job done.
It is also not factually correct to say that there were no pipelines or infrastructure built to tidewater, because in fact, the pipelines that were approved under the previous government led to Cushing and from there to Freeport, Texas. It is kind of like believing that if a road is built towards a highway, but because the highway is not on the direct road and the overpasses are not directly connected, the off-ramps do not count or do not exist. That is a patently untrue argument to make.
Pipelines are connected throughout North America. What the parliamentary secretary is suggesting is that somehow these pipelines that were approved by the previous government, and built by the private sector, lead to nowhere. It is an admission of failure for the government to spend $4.5 billion, and another $8 billion in construction in the future, to build something the private sector wanted to build.