Mr. Speaker, before I answer the question directly, I would ask a favour of my hon. colleague. After we finish this round of remarks, if he could go into the lobby and tell all of his colleagues on that side of the House that climate change in fact is real, he would be doing a service for the Parliament of Canada.
To answer the question on the oil and gas sector, I worked as a lawyer, primarily in Calgary, before entering politics. A big part of my experience was working in the natural resource sector. I have seen firsthand the impact of the growth of that sector on employment in our country, and have seen firsthand the impact of downturns. The fact is, the hon. member is right that we can expand our natural resources and get products to new markets and protect our environment at the same time.
I note, in particular, our government's support of investments at the Flux Lab at St. Francis Xavier University in my riding to develop instrumentation and technologies that can detect leaks. About 20% of natural gas projects are leaking gas into the atmosphere, and companies are missing out on production as a result.
We can move forward with the Trans Mountain pipeline in the right way to ensure that we are factoring in indigenous peoples' perspectives, as well as environmental protection. The reason this project did not go ahead years ago was that the Conservative government of the day did not take seriously the need to protect our environment and incorporate indigenous peoples' perspectives.