Mr. Speaker, I am pleased to join this debate on our Conservative opposition motion.
The member for Central Okanagan—Similkameen—Nicola has put forward a motion such that all members of the House can find something to speak to that relates to what is happening in their constituencies or is affecting the people they represent.
I will focus a lot of my comments on the energy sector. I come from the suburbs of Calgary, where a great many families are still hurting three years after this government took power. It has failed all of them. There are a lot more people who are unemployed or underemployed today, and much of that relates to policy decisions made by the federal government. I will refer to some of them in trying to itemize the case against the Liberal government's economic policies thus far.
One of the things in the motion members will notice is that there are a litany of issues the energy sector and energy workers are facing today in Calgary, Edmonton, Regina, Saskatoon and different parts of British Columbia. We have a government that is intent on phasing out the oil sands, but it is also hurting the energy industry and energy workers who depend on those jobs.
We have a Prime Minister who twice now has said that he wants to phase out the oil sands. The first time he said it was a mistake. The second time, he actually said it in Paris in its legislative assembly. Perhaps he thought Albertans would not catch on, but we did, and we know that he has it in for us. He has it in for the industry that accounts for over 20% of Canada's exports, in dollar figures. That is an incredible amount when compared to the auto sector.
We all saw the news of General Motors shutting down its plant in Oshawa. I, as an Albertan, and I know many of my constituents back home, feel the pain. We understand the pain of losing a job and being told that one is not welcome to come back to work tomorrow and is no longer needed. We understand it, because it has been going on month after month in the province of Alberta. People have been losing their jobs or have been told that they are not needed five days a week anymore. Someone working in construction may come in one day a week. A person cannot feed a family on one day a week of work.
There is a great Yiddish proverb that says, “If things are not as you wish, wish them as they are.” I wish the government would take that advice. Stop saying one thing and doing another. Stop wishing for the end of certain jobs in the private sector. Why not wish them all to succeed?
We have been given an incredible natural endowment of oil and gas. Alberta is also the sunniest province in Canada. It has the most sunny days of any province in Canada, which is a great boon for the solar power industry. There is quite a bit of renewable energy being developed and that has been developed by energy companies, because they are in the business of energy, whichever way it is delivered. Why not promote all of them? Why not defend all of them? That is what Alberta needs and what Canada needs.
We need a government that wants to champion the private sector, not meddle in the private sector. Let it expand, create jobs and do what it does best: provide prosperity for Canadian families. We do not need a government plan. We do not need a government strategy. We do not need government tinkering with different rules. However, that is exactly what we have here. We have a government that is more intent on creating plans and strategies and strategies for plans to plan for strategies, creating more jobs in the public sector here in Ottawa, instead of allowing the private sector to simply do what it does best. We do not have a champion.
Many members have said this already, and I am sure many members will come after me and say it. We have a government that has cancelled pipeline projects. The government strangled energy east to the point that TransCanada could not continue. We have a government that defeated northern gateway. We will hear government caucus members say that it was actually a court decision. Well, that is not true. There was an order in council cancelling northern gateway passed in 2016. Order in Council 2016-1047, passed November 25, 2016, cancelled northern gateway.
The government has crowed about a $40-billion investment in LNG, while we lost $78 billion in LNG development. That $40 billion was approved back in 2012 by the regulator. It was recently approved to go ahead by the private sector, but only after it got assurances in the final deal that it would be exempted from British Columbia's carbon tax, that it would be exempted from basically the last three years of bad economic policy passed by both the Liberal government and the provincial NDP government, in the case of British Columbia. If that is not an indictment of how bad things have become, I do not know what is.
The $40 billion project, approved in 2012, can only go ahead this year with the proviso written into the contract that the past three years of bad economic policy do not apply to them. I do not know what we could call that, other than that it is a form of corporate welfare. This project could not go ahead because the government has been intent on strangling it, making it impossible for them to continue to develop the project, create the jobs and the prosperity to ensure that they can provide taxes and pay royalties to different levels of government. We have a government that is intent on making it more complicated.
When I talked about our needing a champion, I want to reference one of my constituents who is always willing to send me detailed technical information. David Robinson sent me information about New York State pursuing a court case it has brought forward. It is a civil lawsuit against a bunch of oil companies, stating that they failed and disguised the carbon emission costs in their regulatory filings. It specifically targets the Alberta oil sands and Alberta corporations. This is a huge danger to publicly listed companies, especially those based in Alberta and Canada. With this lawsuit there is the potential that a state government and the attorney general of that state, Barbara Underwood, would force the companies to undertake massive write-downs if the state wins this case. Why is the government not championing the cause of Alberta and Canada's energy sector to protect our good name before the courts? The U.S. has a very litigious culture, but it is pursuing this exactly so that it can undermine our continued prosperity and ability to develop our resources. We do not develop our resources just for the purpose of developing resources; we develop them because they provide prosperity, jobs and income so that workers can feed their families. What the vast majority of people want is to be left alone. That is what we hear from countless Albertans. The slogan we have adopted is, “build that pipe.” We really do not care anymore which pipe it is; just build that pipe.
First, we hear the government members say that the previous government did not get it done. What they mean to say is that the previous government did not get a pipeline built to tidewater. It is difficult to get any pipeline built by a private corporation nowadays in Canada because the government and many of its caucus members were helped by volunteers and all of the different environmental groups that are adamantly opposed to any type of development at any time. Therefore, it is quite rich for the government to now turn the argument on its tail and deny that it got help from those environmental groups that opposed all development.
Second, what is ridiculous is that northern gateway got to tidewater. Energy east would have got to tidewater. The Anchor Loop upgrade that was proposed, completed and built by Kinder Morgan expanded shipping out of Burnaby. The Enbridge Line 9B, the Keystone pipeline, not the XL but the basic pipeline that went to Cushing, eventually went to tidewater in Freeport, Texas.
Therefore, to say that the previous government did not get it done is simply to ignore the facts as they are presented.
There is an order in council that cancelled northern gateway. That is an indictment of the government's ability to get any pipelines built. The people who have suffered from three years of bad economic policy are Albertans and Canadians who need these jobs in the energy sector. Canada's number one export is energy. The vast majority of jobs in Alberta are either directly or indirectly related to the energy sector. We have a government that for the past three years has been trying to impede Albertans' prosperity, the jobs that provide for our families and the opportunity that comes with that.
As I have said before in the House, we have spent a generation doing two things. We have attracted people to our province and convinced them to join the shared prosperity that hard work can create, even though we do not have the great advantage of beautiful west coast beaches. Also, we have spent a generation convincing young people and women to get into the STEM fields of the sciences, technology, engineering and math. Convincing them to do that took a generation. Because of the government's decisions and its three years of bad economic policy, all of that work has been undone.
I hope all members of the House will join me in voting for this motion.