Madam Speaker, it is a pleasure to be in the House today to speak to this very important issue.
I have to say I have been here all night, and the parliamentary theatrics that have been going on are quite impressive from the opposite side of the floor.
However, I do want to be very clear. This is an issue that is about our country, about our nation, that is looking at taking the next step, enhancing and elevating doing business to the next level and sending a strong message internationally that Canada is in fact open for business.
The TMX project is of vital strategic interest to Canada, and it will be built. Our government has initiated formal financial discussions with Kinder Morgan, the result of which will be to remove uncertainty overhanging this particular project. We are also actively pursuing legislation, the actions that will assert and reinforce the federal jurisdiction in this matter, which we know we clearly have. Hundreds of thousands of hard-working Canadians depend on this project being built. Protecting our environment and growing our economy are not opposing values. On the contrary, each makes the other possible.
I want to give those members on the opposite side of the floor a bit of a history lesson in comparison to what I have heard today. The member for Durham mentioned that the government was in comparison to a Hail Mary pass. Let me just say this: I think on the opposite side of the floor it is the opposition that is throwing the Hail Mary.
Some will recall that the Harper government refused to officially endorse the northern gateway pipeline project until the National Energy Board's joint review panel had a chance to finish its review. The Hail Mary came when the party, attempting to shore up its western vote, asked this government to endorse the project before the experts had a chance to review it. This government was very clear in the process, being both accountable as well as responsible and, most importantly, respectful.
We consulted, for example, with the indigenous community. Our government was and continues to be committed to renewing the relationship with indigenous peoples based on the recognition of rights, respect, co-operation, and, equally as important, partnership. We are committed to reconciliation and will work in partnership to address the issues of importance to indigenous communities.
On the TMX expansion, Canada has in fact completed the deepest consultations with rights holders ever on a major project in this country. To date, 43 first nations have negotiated benefit agreements with this project, and 33 of those are in British Columbia. We have listened, and we will continue to listen.
Once again, in contrast, the Conservative Party had 10 years to build a pipeline to ship Canada's resources to new global markets. It built zero. The Conservatives had 10 years to consult indigenous and local communities. They ignored them. The Conservatives had 10 years to rally the country around the need for new pipeline capacity to end the discount on landlocked Canadian crude. They did not. The Conservatives had 10 years to address environmental concerns. They failed. We will take no lessons from the Conservatives.
The economic benefits to this nation will be compounded on the strengths that we have already established throughout many years: thousands of new jobs during construction, hundreds of permanent jobs per year during operation, $4.5 billion in government revenues to reinvest in priorities such as hospitals and roads, clean-energy initiatives, and innovation technology, which I will get back to in a second.
Strategic access to new global markets unlocks the value of Canada's natural resources. This $7.4-billion project has significant economic benefits, including providing an expected $4.5 billion in government revenues. It will create thousands of new jobs in Alberta and B.C. during construction, not to mention the supply chain that exists from coast to coast to coast. Indigenous peoples will also benefit from jobs and business opportunities as a result of over $300 million in mutual benefit agreements signed with the proponent.
The project will expand access to Canada's export market access for oil markets in Washington State, northeast Asia, Japan, China, South Korea, and Taiwan, and secondary markets in the United States, such as California, Hawaii, and Alaska. It will also help address an emergency bottleneck in Canada's pipeline network, which might otherwise drive producers to greater reliance on transportation by rail.
As I mentioned earlier, community consultations consisted of 44 public meetings in 11 communities on pipeline routing, more than 35,000 questionnaire submissions, more than 20,000 email submissions, and 1,600 participants in the review process.
In May 2016, the Minister of Natural Resources named a three-member ministerial panel for the proposed project. The ministerial panel heard the views of Canadians, local communities, and indigenous groups along the proposed pipeline and shipping route, who may not have been considered as part of the review in the past.
Some people would ask, as the member for Niagara Centre, what interest I would have in this. The interest is from coast to coast to coast, with respect to Niagara being an international trade corridor; the Great Lakes; the ability to contribute as a region and as a riding to the integration of distributional logistics; ensuring we become an enabler for the nation to perform a greater and higher degree of transportation, thus placing our great nation on a higher level globally when it comes to the economy. There is our supply chain, Oskam Steel, Thurston Machine, Barber Hymac, JTL Machine, ITT, all contributing to the sector, from Ontario, from Niagara.
This government has been deliberate in putting forward an overall strategy for jobs and the economy. The oceans protection plan, the trade corridor strategy, the ports modernization plan, the infrastructure plan, science and innovation, international relations, all of which this government has been participating in over the course of the past two years. They are all in step with Canada's new economy and ensuring that this project aligns with the other efforts this government has been working on for the past two years to create jobs, to create the economy, to create health, to create wealth, and to ensure that our product, our GDP, as well as the relationships we are accruing over time throughout our global economy are healthy. This project, supported by this government moving forward sooner rather than later, is one that we as a nation will be truly proud of well down the road for the future generations, to once again ensure that the economy of Canada extends to the economy of the global markets that we are inevitably going to partner with.