Mr. Speaker, my hon. friend and I have the privilege of representing the third largest city in Alberta, the city of Red Deer and the surrounding rural areas, otherwise affectionately known as “central Alberta”. It is the hub in Alberta of oil and gas support services, including pipeline companies and rig companies that drill precision wells right there. There is an EVRAZ plant there making steel tubing for the industry, the Blindman Industrial Park and the Edgar Industrial Park. Everything is all set up there to be a service sector for the oil and gas industry.
The policies that have been implemented since the election in 2015 have caused such a chill in the investment environment in the oil and gas sector that employment has plummeted in central Alberta to levels we have not seen since Pierre Elliott Trudeau was the prime minister of Canada.
Could my colleague validate what I have been saying but has been falling on deaf ears, that the energy policies of the government are every bit as bad as the former national energy program?