Mr. Speaker, I would like to thank the member for Saskatoon—Grasswood for his question and also for acknowledging that Atlantic Canada does exist. It must be the 32 loud voices of the Atlantic MPs that has brought this back to reality for the Conservatives.
Canadians know how important the energy sector is to our economy and our country. It is a major source of employment and investment, and it produces significant revenues for governments at all levels. In 2016, the oil and gas industry directly employed almost 400,000 Canadians and contributed approximately $100 billion to our nominal GDP. It also produced billions of dollars in government revenues, revenues that pay for our hospitals, schools, new bridges and safer roads, and for the social programs that make us who we are.
No country would ever think about leaving the reserves that we are fortunate enough to have in the ground, no country would turn its back on the jobs and opportunities that it represents, and no country would put all of its oil and gas exports in a single American basket. That is why we launched a comprehensive review of Canada's environmental and regulatory systems. We know the energy sector's future depends on project reviews that are more predictable and timely without compromising on public consultation, indigenous reconciliation, and environmental protections, but we also moved quickly to introduce a set of interim principles to review major projects already in the queue.
What has been the result? Our government has approved a number of major resource projects, including the Trans Mountain expansion and Line 3 replacement pipelines. These new pipelines will diversify our markets, are being built with improved environmental safety and relationships with our indigenous partners, and will create thousands of good middle-class jobs. These approvals were the right decision then, and they are the right decision now.
I want to be very clear on that. Those two pipelines were approved because they are in the national interest. They were approved based on solid science, an assessment of the upstream GHG emissions, and meaningful consultations with indigenous peoples. What is more, we would have had the same approach with energy east and no one wanted that to happen any more than my New Brunswick colleagues and I.
Contrary to what the member opposite says, there was no changing of the rules midway through. In fact, just the opposite is true. We implemented our interim principles in January 2016, three months before TransCanada resubmitted its plans for energy east. I cannot speak for TransCanada, but I think it is reasonable to infer that it looked at our interim approach and decided that it could work with it. Why else would it have proceeded with its submission?
As the Minister of Natural Resources has said numerous times, nothing has changed from our perspective. Why did TransCanada choose to abandon the energy east project? Again, I cannot speak for the company, but I know what one of our country's leading experts said. Andrew Leach is an associate professor at the Alberta School of Business and claims the main culprit in energy east's demise was the re-emergence of TransCanada's Keystone XL project south of the border. In fact, Professor Leach called Keystone XL “an 800,000-barrel-a-day express line to refining centres in the United States” and that it “presented a more attractive option for shippers than Energy East”. In short, Professor Leach concluded that TransCanada made a business decision, and that is its right.